Filling the Gaps: following in the footsteps of the Wildwood and the Angle

[TesalionLortus]

I must say... CardoSwan border is SICK. If they add Rhudaur to the North and bridge these small gaps around Moors/Trollshaws... then Eriador's open-world will be INSANE. Can't wait. Players will start treating the containment of Moria as a blessing :P

I was supposed to play Before the Shadow on new character but I took a "stroll" on my main from the Barrow-downs along the new border and... this took me 2 hours to check everything out and then finish with this wonderful, hidden little corner of Western Eregion:



(Granted, I got lost in one portion of Lonelands once, but still... and I haven't even seen San Ford yet, nevermind most of the new landmass and content...).

All of this makes me wish for some free-roam progression content even more strongly... Such a huge border, so many nooks and crannies, so many vast spaces and different ruins, but every viable activity that can give you exp would be in quest hubs and I've only run across one during 2-3 hours of walking and riding around, and no autobestowed quests either. At this pace, I won't even play this game anymore outside of end game stories on my main... I will just walk and that's it. Which is all cool but one could wish you don't have to choose between conscious "follow the story and quest locations!" or just sight seeing between zones across borders in a captivating recreation of open Middle-earth, that both of these were somehow interchangeable and progression attached, to some degree. Nobody expects to be able to level up without an effort, but ideally, there would be some things along the way one can stumble upon: resource nodes that seem important and turns out decent XP can be earnt from these, quests in the wild, lone NPCs, discovery points with XP rewards, special mobs rewarding more XP, relics amongst the ruins, scattered items-attached quests and tasks, anything.




This update did wonders for the remains of Arnor. Riding alongside the border you can tell how all of this was once a part of this one huge kingdom. The citadels on the Southern border of the Lonelands, while it's appropriate for them to be citadels rather than just remains of comfy cities (due to the later conflict for Whethertop), you can also tell all of these places could have been comfy, functional cities once, when there was peace and Arnor was united, because they are suited in functional places and connected to the rest of the world. There are roads North and South, travelling from a keep in Lonelands and crossing into Cardolan feels normal, and like something regular citizens and merchant did once (as opposed to entering this boxed valley that Lonelands was previously, which might have worked as a battle zone but hardly as an integral part of united Arnor). For example, the Lornspan bridge and the road into Cardolan below it, feels great! Everything between it and Nindor/swamps connected through South Downs. If the same treatment can be given to the Rhudaur to the North, tear down all these things behind Wheathertop and soften the elevation all across the border, including near the "battleground" with lvl 50 half-orcs near Breeland... it'll be INSANELY spectacular, the feeling of aliveness (of an old ruined civilization) that I haven't really witnessed in gaming? Also, probably one of the most open (from every side) landscapes in gaming? O_O

[auximenes]

I must say... CardoSwan border is SICK. If they add Rhudaur to the North and bridge these small gaps around Moors/Trollshaws... then Eriador's open-world will be INSANE. Can't wait. Players will start treating the containment of Moria as a blessing :P

Nice pic, thanks for sharing.

[TesalionLortus]

In addition, having witnessed all that, once again I need to strongly disagree with Phantion here (assuming their idea was "Cardo is fancy and shiny and splendorous, so older zones of Cardolan/Arthedain should be more like that too")

I quickly made this little ugly map of the game's Arnor and the divided kingdoms, and - to me - how things are right now, well... they are almost perfectly balanced... placement-wise. It's very immersive actually, when you really start thinking of it, and how the establishment of Arnor worked or how these wars were waged.






Arthedain Center - Anuminnas style, which is very distinct and quite a bit different from Gondor, but still pristine (at least what remained of it). It was built as this glorious capital, yes, but totally FROM SCRATCH. There were most likely no existing cities here and it wasn't a land that already had Numenorean colonies and settlements in it - so that something more original came out of it wouldn't be surprising (perhaps something evocative of a style that wasn't really used in any Numenorean colonies, which all follow a specific pattern, but maybe cities of Numenor on the Island looked more like this?). Anuminnas style has kind of more grace, towers are thinner, etc, feels less threatening and more comfy. VS later LOTRO's stuff around Gondor and old colonies which screams boldness and strength in no gentle terms.

Arthedain Breeland/Shire - Small warn remains, very few well-kept keeps, but mostly a tower here, piece of a wall there, all with more generic fortress looks and diverse shapes of all kinds. Some of that would be these altars, platforms or circles, which looks like these could have been some city centers in the past, kind of like ancient greek forums. But generally, not much color or splendor here, it was all picked apart over the years and these wouldn't be in close proximity to the capitol nor close to any major Numenorean colonies and holdings of old. Some of these actually carry over to the Western Lonelands.

Arthedain Northdowns - Same, not a main center of Arnor and far from colonies, so it would have different influences. Some things survived in these parts in better shape, Esteldin most of all (which was named differently in the past) and you can actually see different influences throughout this area, with different styles, not just the same building blocks as West and South. It's not unlikely that these things were build on top of older local settlements/structures/sites and integrated them somehow, while the Far Northern locals were slowly integrated into Arnor. (Fornost could be read like that too, plus it was supposed to be a fortress city, plus WK exposition happened to it, but yeah, I do agree with Phantion it could use some improvements to make it feel more like it became a capital and perhaps a new royal portion deeper into these mountains, except not in a "this is so shiny & colorful looking now!" way - because WK wouldn't have any of it).

Arthedain Lonelands - It evidently possessed these keeps North of Amon Sul but, as mentioned through the deeds, these were taken almost immediately by Rhudaur. Which then held them, as part of their frontier, so they're now more reminiscent in style to Rhudaur - or maybe they were simply part of one of Arnorian provinces, which leaned into this Rhudarian specific style, except Arthedain controlled them after the separation but since Rhudaur hold a strong claim to these, well, that's why they were eager and so effective at taking them quickly? Then we have this Southern frontier cutting through the Lonelands, undoubtedly held by Arthedain, because it was mentioned the swamp part was Arthedain. In style, they're extensions of what we know from Breeland/Northdowns, except super fortified, with many unique layouts we haven't seen in these other places. For many years it was a frontier and a war zone, and war does not need fancy - basic medieval turrets or keeps heavily built into surrounding hills sound just about right. No need for color or too much deco here, and even when these parts were one peaceful Arnor, just like with these other adjacent regions, this is not exactly in close proximity to any of the capitals or Numenorean places to look super extra rich, plus anything that was rich got taken ages ago.



Cardolan Barrow-downs + Cardolan city in the Lonelands - Barrow-downs as a burial site and refuge, but far from the main center of the kingdom, probably build on top of some old Edain burrows, it was mentioned there were smaller petty kings and infighting, even before the final blow of the WK. Plus Minas Eriol, which too is an extension of Breeland approach - in the past could have been more splendorous, lively city (but not as marvelous as centers of the kingdom), with cool arches, columns and social places.

In-between: From what I've seen, what's there below the Barrow-downs in Cardolan is like a merge between stuff from the North and these new Cardolan assets. Looks fine and consistent, not immediately too heavily rich.

Cardolan Center: The new Cardolan style that merges different influences and comes close to what we know from Gondor and old Numenorean colonies. Because, yeah, it would have been the center of Numenorean activities before the establishment of Arnor, more widespread richness and kind of baroque boldness sounds right. Plus, Cardolan=desolate because WK specifically made it so with the weights and stuff, which would discourage any humans including robbers, treasure seekers and such, so the baroque parts, emblems and decos aren't all gone.




"Battleground" ruins - Here it's off, and kind of in its own pocket. A difference in shapes and forms is nice and these are super generic which makes them tolerable because not everything needs to adhere to specific assets. Civilization has variety. So, ideally, rather than change that, would love them to either give it more context why it looks like that and what kind of battleground was it, or maybe just scatter these assets all throughout Arnor, here and there, as extra ruined bits of things, so this doesn't seem like it's an isolated incident. I say just scatter some of these assets from this specific set all across Arnor for variety, like maybe they were some basic basic keeps, maybe city halls, etc.





Rhudaur Lonelands/the Angle/Trollshows - It has its own specific color palette and some pieces, I believe, and it's pretty consistent, also, due to the involvement of Hill-men and others, like the dynasty of lesser men mentioned in the Angle, makes sense that this part of Arnor would stand apart a bit, while still mostly with "lesser" fortified influences such as basic medieval walls and keeps.

Rhudaur Center - For the entire picture to be complete... it would need to be unique, just like centers of Cardolan and Arthedain are. Also, it would need to be the poorest looking one, I believe. Less flair, more medieval? Perhaps? Or something like that. Rather than lean into the direction of Gondor and old Numenorean places, like Cardolan does, it would need to feel unique, I guess. Something more impressive than old Rhudarian assets but not too over the top with richness, with some "lesser" Rhudaurian structures in there.




So... I don't think much of it needs changes, especially that all of these old assets look pretty nice to me, actually. They're very detailed and captivating, once you bring the details out. I would be even extra careful with brining any new emblem parts into these old areas, maybe some can be added to Evendim and Breeland, places like that, but the hotpot of Lonelands, or where defragmentation occurred, with petty kings, where fortresses switched hands all the time, it would be weird for these fortresses to have any nice-looking highly specific kingdom emblems in them, no?

Something could be done with Fornost of course, as mentioned, but nothing shiny and fancy.

The Battleground situation would need to be addressed somehow.

Rhudaur's center needs to be created and feel like it belongs, not just a copy of the assets you've got for Cardolan, which would be geographically unfitting and thus off.

I guess you could create something West of Anuminnas one day? But again, do take care it's not stylistically off.

Plus, fix some badly looking, awkward creations like the Armory in Angmar. It's a bit weird and these two blocks really don't go well together, most of all hardly feels like a legit place/tower, more like a house of cards. I guess there are a few places like that but I don't think they are that many anyway. Most of the ruins and keeps are actually still very captivating to me 2022 and not off at all.

[Phantion]

[snip]

Let's just agree to disagree. I didn't mean to say that they should remove all the older assets or "make them shinier" or any such thing; maybe I didn't explain enough or my wording was off. I think you somewhat misunderstand me.

Cardolan's ruins aren't "new and shiny." They're covered with moss and weathered stone. They simply evoke the realm's Númenorean origins. I agree that the further away from the colonies you go, the less "Númenorean" it could look with plenty of ruffians and brigands picking things off throughout the years - but I would also count Annúminas - and I'd also point out the etymological connection: Númenor. Annúminas. The "núm" root is in both; line them up.

But I must very much disagree with your interpretation of the Witch-King's actions in Fornost because of Minas Morgul. Tolkien very clearly describes Minas Morgul. It still, very much, resembles Minas Ithil of old. The Witch-King didn't knock it down or rebuild from scratch or even strip it of ornamentation (*he was once an unspecified, probably Numenorean Lord after all, and perhaps Sauron gave him his "one of the Nine" rings while on Numenor). The Witch-King embalmed the city; he gave it a corpse-like glow. He corrupted it. But he did not alter its shape or appearance; he gave it a "corpse-like" glow through his sorcery.

Nothing in the lore suggests he didn't do the same for Fornost as he took it over and commanded it, versus destroying it. There, we might agree, I think, and you've said Fornost could use some updates. I don't think it should look new or any such thing. But I do think an older, weathered version of the "pristine Fornost" posted on the previous page would work very well, with the assets updated and placed more carefully. Also, because the WK inhabited it, and because of its fell reputation as "Dead Man's Dike" among Men, there were probably far fewer robbers or ruffians touching the place over time.

But at the end of the day, neither of us is right or wrong; we just have different interpretations - different imaginings of what the Witch-King would have done to Fornost. You say he would have destroyed it- as he did Amon Sul. I say he would've embalmed it like Minas Ithil and corrupted it without diminishing any of its then-current defences; he would've "Mordor-ized" it or "Angmar-ized" it and placed Orcs and fallen Men on the walls and the like and would have fortified the place for when Glorfindel and Earnur showed up. But again, that's just my own reading - my interpretation.

When I said that Evendim and Fornost are "close," I forgot to emphasize "relatively close" as in comparison to, say, southern Cardolan; I'm aware they are several provinces away from each other with a much higher scale on Tolkien's actual map. They are still, however, situated in northwestern Eriador and - again, relatively speaking - closer to each other than say to Tyrn Gorthad or the Enedwaith border or Rhudaur's capital. It was settled by Elendil's grandchildren and great-grandchildren - who still would've, I argue, known something about Numenor and its building. I still maintain that, at its bones, Fornost resembled Annuminas and Tyrn Gorthad a bit more than, say, Esteldin. You still had longer lived Dúnedain - either directly from or immediately descended from Númenoreans.

The rest of the ruins can remain the same, I think, weathered over time and sacked and robbed by various forces as a stark contrast to Gondor, which maintained its architecture. But I do think that the closer you are to the "old Arnor," the first Arnor founded by Elendil, the more it needs to reflect the Numenorean roots - not in a "shiny / pristine way," but more in the sort of way that the Gondorian ruins in Enedwaith, Dunland, Rohan, and Great River all reflect their root-origins just as Osgiliath does.

In other words, if the original Arnor more closely resembled current TA Gondor precisely because Elendil founded it, just as Elendil's sons founded Gondor at the precise same time in its history, then I would think their Númenorean origins would take precedence over any local influences, even if further from Númenor's colonies: because, at that time in Middle-earth's history, they were still Númenoreans, and they bore the memory of Númenor with them when it fell. In my interpretation, they would want to reflect that memory. I think Fornost was "practice" for Minas Morgul - the Witch-King's first gander at embaling / corrupting a great city or fortress through sorcery. But again, that's my reading.

So, in summation, let's agree to disagree; we'll never fully agree because we each have valid, though very different readings drawn from the same text. Tolkien doesn't really tell us, either way, in detail what the Witch-King did to Fornost.

What we do agree on, at least, is that Fornost could use some forced, very careful, sensitive "revisions" to its assets: not necessarily "new or shiny" or anything like that. I think it could use a touch of the older style that signals: This city was built by Elendil's immediate and second-generation descendants - not by a different King a thousand years later - and though the Witch-King did a number on it, it still retains some of its old grandeur, although weathered, ruined, and diminished. The current version just doesn't seem to do that; I think the two zones of Númenorean influence are a kind of wide arc around Annúminas out to Fornost and down and around to Bar Faroth, etc. in Yondershire, and perhaps some western ruins we haven't found yet, as the Old Arnor, and with Cardolan, its Númenor's sea-colonies (*Cardolan is still a fair distance from the sea, so Tharbad is the zone of influence, draw a circle around it), and the North Downs ruins closer to Angmar and Rhudaur, I do agree, should probably remain as they are as "late-Arnorian ruins" with more local influences over them.

Cheers!

[Valather89]

This map is awesome and I always look forward to seeing its next iteration everytime we get a new addition to the landscape. As someone who first played this game during beta when I was just a teenager, seeing how Middle-earth's playable space (and particularly Eriador's) keeps getting bigger after so many years just fills me with joy.



Saying it here because I'm pretty sure its author, Varghedin, reads this thread from time to time (as shown by the change of the former "Gram Ridges" zone to "Rhudaur" after Scenario's post, or the addition of the West-march region, which was a suggestion of mine here a few months ago). . And needless to say, thank you to everyone on LOTRO's team.

[TesalionLortus]

Cardolan's ruins aren't "new and shiny." They're covered with moss and weathered stone. They simply evoke the realm's Númenorean origins.

Well, yeah, that's what I meant by shiny and "new" as in relatively impressive, pompous and glorious. (so you *can tell*)


All in all, we do agree, except a little bit of a difference regarding the city under the Witch-king Say, if Fornost was supposed to have Anuminnas parts, yeah, what you said, but maybe use them in different ways than the ones we've already saw, and change colors so they match the rest (I think even OG Fornost might have this problem that some of the pieces don't exactly match in color, with some noticably darker than others)

But I do think that the closer you are to the "old Arnor," the first Arnor founded by Elendil, the more it needs to reflect the Numenorean roots - not in a "shiny / pristine way," but more in the sort of way that the Gondorian ruins in Enedwaith, Dunland, Rohan, and Great River all reflect their root-origins just as Osgiliath does.

I remembered that and then I forgot, but this is where we disagree the strongest I think. I could maybe see the "colonial" influence penetrate into Enedwaith and Dunland due to proximity, they're not that far North. But nope for literally everything North of White Mountains (due to mountain barrier and not much colonial penetration) or something like the Paths isn't really some sign of brilliance and consistency of Arnor, it's just the devs using the same ruin sets (so same shapes everywhere too) or modifying them only very slightly. But realistically, there should be some differently looking remains out there, not all of Gondor cut from the same "Numenor roots!" cloth. So my hope is Arnor can remain more like it would work realistically, a little bit more varied in shape and approach, even throughout the different places of "old Arnor".

In other words, if the original Arnor more closely resembled current TA Gondor precisely because Elendil founded it, just as Elendil's sons founded Gondor at the precise same time in its history, then I would think their Númenorean origins would take precedence over any local influences, even if further from Númenor's colonies: because, at that time in Middle-earth's history, they were still Númenoreans, and they bore the memory of Númenor with them when it fell. In my interpretation, they would want to reflect that memory.

Want vs realism are two different things entirely - and maybe some of them would have different ideas (or rather their architects ;P). That's what I'm trying to say. The kingdoms they founded are many provinces apart, and each part assimilated different locals, also, if they were to totally dismiss any local influences because what they wanted is one big memorial of Numenor across Middle-earth... wouldn't that make them *already* look like they are repeating the exact same mistakes of Numenor? Dominion and pride? This is why I like the idea of there being different approaches and influences in their big central cities throughout this big big kingdom - that Anuminnas doesn't evoke what Gondor looks like (by having the same slightly changed assets there), that Rhudaur at its core might look differently than Anuminnas/Cardolan/Gondor and that Cardolan is a bit more like Gondor but Arthedain is nothing like it when you look at its towering spires and greater shapes. Also, cities are build with specific styles in mind, so it would be weird to shoehorn some Gondorian-looking (as in "Numenorean") pieces everywhere


Oh well, but for now, I look forward to seeing more of Cardolan... assuming I won't end up on my main going in the direction of San Ford this time... Oh, and I do hope they can fix the new Barrow pillars that I've posted about in another thread, they really jarring with their issues (though I guess their Cardolan counterparts don't need to be pale-looking, which I suggested for the ones they used in old Barrow-downs)

[Phantion]

Oh well, but for now, I look forward to seeing more of Cardolan... assuming I won't end up on my main going in the direction of San Ford this time... Oh, and I do hope they can fix the new Barrow pillars that I've posted about in another thread, they really jarring with their issues (though I guess their Cardolan counterparts don't need to be pale-looking, which I suggested for the ones they used in old Barrow-downs)

Yep! If anything, by now, we're making Scenario laugh! Much ado about ruins!

So, back to the OP, I've been thinking about some gaps. I do wish we had an Iron Pass / Northern Misties zone to connect from the current Misties up to Angmar and Gundabad and kind of in between Barad Gularan and Car Bronach - since it's a considerable distance. I think that . . . that, ironically, might "solve" the Moors problem: if you could like see the Moors but from a distance above or something. There's more than 1 approach to think about how areas might be connected.

I also think that . . . now that we have this Loknashra plot from Gundabad . . . a Forodwaith region would work - and it would be cool to have an "Eastern Forodwaith" north of Car Bronach / Ered Mithrin and a "Western Forodwaith" north of Angmar and Forochel and perhaps a connector down between Forochel and Angmar and North Downs - and for the two halves to have their "connector" / "hidden portal" - or multiple such hidden portals (*I much prefer like the Gap of Rohan and Eastfold - Beacon Hills transitions that just give a loading screen without a "portal" per se) - to get between them.

Another northern one - and I know we're sick of Dwarves, and this should probably wait for some other time later on - would be to finish the northeastern side of Erebor and expand Withered Heath out to some area just due north of Iron Hills, which would connect down near Jarnfast and Hammerstead / Utterby. I do think, as with Mount Doom, it would be good to be able to "ride around" Erebor in a circle, since, after all, it's "The Lonely Mountain."

To my mind, those additions - and northern Lindon - would properly finish the North of Middle-earth, pretty much.

Cheers!

[TesalionLortus]

Yep! If anything, by now, we're making Scenario laugh! Much ado about ruins!

Well, I don't think he is laughing :P No matter how seriously the devs approach our concerns/ravings, I guess... it's not so bad to see a more passionate, appreciative discussion about the game world as a response to new content whereas the general, vocal response seems to be regarding The Rock and not content itself? XD



I know it's very very unlikely that Sev's "sea salt" was in connection to icy waters but yeah, I really wouldn't mind seeing Forodwaith - or, firstly, everything before that in general. But yeah, that could actually include sea water and a pretty long coastline too, so never say never :P




East and North-east of Forochel is content worth of some regular updates + whole expansion, easily. And the landmasses here could be a little bit more empty wastes, with CardoSwan treatment in terms of how far they can push the open landmass size, so indeed they could cover lots of ground here. We could explore Eastern Forochel (including the whole Eastern shore line, stumble upon actual glaciers and such), Western Angmar (that's covered in snow, which would be in line with the original unrealized concept for that region), have the gap between Forochel, Northdowns and Angmar all covered, with road from the Ironspan (through not every nook and cranny traversable I guess), the road could even take us North towards more of the shoreline of this huge bay. But yeah we could also go into Iron Pass, and then North on the Rhovanion's side.


The idea of Forochel styled places but done in 2022+ is also a very attractive one. I don't mind ice and cold at all. Once the game takes us into Forodwaith proper, could even stumble upon *some* remnants of Morgoth's times, like that fortress from Rings of Power. There is also PLENTY of Angmarim related plot threads left hanging that could come into play here, plus Drugoth, plus Hobgoblins and their ice powers, Forodwaith really doesn't seem THAT far-fetched, all these things in the picture here. The Rhudaur oath-stone, as things stand, had to be moved somewhere, right. Iron Pass most likely, though maybe it won't remain there long and the Angmarim are planning to do something with it

[TesalionLortus]

Btw, I really don't care whether we have connectors/portals that are hidden or visible, what matters is that we have them introduced at all. I guess I am open-minded to visible portals since these might be actually more respectful of a low level player who comes across them VS boom loading screen, you were suddenly teleported because you followed that curious path...

I wish Scenario could just make it his pet project one day to connect the world via teleports where the landmass just asks for it, as I documented recently. No idea how long it takes to set up a teleport connection and how big of a project that would be, but since these don't even involve horse travel routes then maybe... not that long?

[Arnand_the_Fox]

I could see a lot of these missing areas be tied into a larger story arc revolving around the leftover plot threads involving the different groups of men. Like the Dwarves got the "The Legacy of Durin and the Trials of the Dwarves" storyline, humans could get "The Futures of Men" story, or something like that.

You could get Anfalas/Umbar for the Corsairs, "Southguard" and Harondor for the Haradrim, Nurn and Lithlad for the Nurnhoth/other enslaved Mordor residents, Middle Mirkwood and Fields of Celduin for more woodsman content with a bit of Easterling stuff in the fields of Celduin, which leads to the Barding Lands and Dorwinion for resolving the Easterling plot. All of these at level cap.


And as other people have mentioned theres lots of good or obvious story beats for a number of other maps(some of these names taken from Varghedin's map)

• White Mountains: A level 95-100ish zone that connects Rohan and Gondor. Have the Gem-Cutters show up as a narrative reminder of their existence between our first encounter with the family in Eregion, and later encounters with them in Erebor and Gundabad. Include the dwarf settlements of Zigil-jâbal and Kechel, and deal with the few stories of things we've heard going on there.
• Brown Lands: A level 75-80 zone one goes to between the Great River and Eastern Rohan. More stuff about the Easterlings we encounter in the Great River. Have Radagast show up as a similar bridge between his appearance in Lone Lands, and later appearances in the northern zones, trying to heal the land. Maybe working with an Ent or two from Fangorn thats come over to investigate more into what happened to the Entwives.
• Tolfalas: Level 100ish zone. An easy spot for a Wildwoods/Angle side adventure. Have it be about chasing down supposed buried treasure on the island you don't want the Corsairs to get.
• Iron Pass: Level 140+ zone, physically connecting Angmar to Gundabad, dealing with the leftover Angmar plot threads brought up in Gundabad.
• Kallioita: Level 50ish map connecting Forchel to Angmar, dealing more with the Lossoth, and Angmar's attempts to manipulate/control them.
• The Elven lands of Mithlond, Harlond, and Forlond: I'm not really sure what the best level range for this is. Grey Havens has always been treated as "Endgame of endgame" but by the time Frodo leaves there really shouldn't be any issues left here, and SSG is pretty hesitant about putting high level zones near started zones. On the other hand it being a series of low level zones also seems wrong because of its status as "the end of the plot", and it wouldn't make much sense to add some low level starter zones if you're also adding it in because the game/story is over.
• South Farthing: Low level zone maybe set after Yondershire, level 23-26?. Gotta finish out the Shire, complete those mail questlines, and do some more Lotho/Sharky buildup.
• Northern Erid Luin and Lune Rushes: More early game level 15-30 zones. Humans, Elves, and Hobbits got a lot of early game content expansion with Yondershire, Wildwood, Angle, and now Swanfleet and Cardolan. Dwarves should get some stuff too, and this would be a good place for two zones for that.
• The gap of northern Mirkwood: Level 115-120 zone, dealing more with the return of the Taurogrim, and whats driving their actions.
• Heathlands/Forodwaith: Level cap zones dealing with the legend of Thafar-gathol, and comments made by the Hobgoblins about stuff up north.
• Emyn Muil: Level 75-80ish. Something something chasing down orcs invading Rohan/following behind Frodo to cover tracks so orcs don't find him etc.

There are two big areas I'm not really sure what to do with.

1. Everything along the coasts from western Anfalas, to Andrast, the Druwaith Iaur, western and southern Enedwaith, 2-3 zones worth of Minhiriath, the southern Erid Luin, the southern half of Harlindon, the northern half of Forlindon, and the Lindon Reach. These areas either don't actually show up on either the Gondor or Eriador maps(western Anfalas, Andrast, Druwaith Iaur), or are canonically uninhabited(the rest of Enedwaith and Minhiriath outside of a small group of forest hunters in the Eryn Vorn). While SSG has done a pretty good job with maps where there's barely anyone there, like the recent ones, those at least made sense because they were along the old road there. I'm not sure what would be a good narrative for going to regions where literally no one lives in the modern day, and I don't know how much players would accept a dozen maps of largely nothing landscape.
2. That giant blank spot in the east. That area south of the River Running, east of Mirkwood, west of the Sea of Rhun, and north of Mordor. In all the Lord of the Rings maps I can recall seeing this has always been a giant blank spot with no details filled in, no marked towns, cities, or villages, and generally no implication of real habitation. Much like the areas above, I'm not really sure what good narrative reason we would have to go like 7-8 maps worth of what is presumed to be uninhabited flat grasslands?

[TesalionLortus]

You can't really have Anfalas for the Corsairs because they don't have a narrative right to remain in Gondor anymore and were completely routed, otherwise what would be the point of the Oath-breakers?

• The Elven lands of Mithlond, Harlond, and Forlond: I'm not really sure what the best level range for this is. Grey Havens has always been treated as "Endgame of endgame" but by the time Frodo leaves there really shouldn't be any issues left here, and SSG is pretty hesitant about putting high level zones near started zones. On the other hand it being a series of low level zones also seems wrong because of its status as "the end of the plot", and it wouldn't make much sense to add some low level starter zones if you're also adding it in because the game/story is over.

Lindon is perfectly isolated, so they don't really have such a big issue like in other places, to be honest. They can have just two roads towards it though the Mountain Pass infested by goblins and the currently closed gate, in the past labelled as "to Sarnur" (not the dungeon, the land/city). Plus on the river but no low level player would try that I imagine. Quite recently MoL said that they indeed do have plans/eyes set on before and after, so please can we stop with this "Grey Havens will be the end of the game!" myth. :P There is nothing stopping them from thoroughly exploring this entire bay and surrounding lands, and even Frodo's passing doesn't mean all possible threats must be gone. For starters, they have completely unscathed Blue-crag goblins who were active in the area, Dourhands might come into play as well.

western and southern Enedwaith, 2-3 zones worth of Minhiriath,

Well, we discussed it here and we pretty much seem to be in agreement that these are PERFECT for alternate to Moria or alternate to Rohan solutions, for lvl ranges. They're also empty enough sandbox (in terms of lore) for devs to play in and come up with completely original quests/stories that wouldn't really tie too much into existing stories/characters, so it doesn't really seem off/conflict with anything established/destabilizes the flow of old stories. You can really see how careful they needed to be when telling stories in CardoSwan, for example.

As for what there is and can be done with lore - I would say brigands, "Southerners," maybe half-orcs as well, if they are more than just transformed Dunlendings (they seem too well established/super loyal to be just that, whereas Saruman's sway over Dunland and his Dunlendings captives for experimentation are fairly recent). I thought that's kinda what they were going for with Cardolan but turned out not really - which is actually even better now, because Minhiriath/Southern Enedwaith can easily be turned into something like Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Stolen Lands. We've been stuck with all these "expansionist" brigands on Eriador's side for ages now... would be nice to have some lore explanation for them. Some would be locals, like Blackwolds, but many of them would not, specifically those in service of Sharkey and very organized. So... where the heck are they coming from? They can't just manifest from nowhere. I mean, it's even true for Swanfleet, there is specifically a quest that says they showed up all of a sudden, erected fortified camp almost overnight and started to offer "protection" and do raids. So yeah, Stolen Lands... it really does sound a lot like Stolen Lands... I mean, I can easily imagine some self-styled king of the brigands with a seat atop a ruined Numenorean keep :P Maybe he even fancies himself a king of Numenor or something :P

I'm not sure what would be a good narrative for going to regions where literally no one lives in the modern day, and I don't know how much players would accept a dozen maps of largely nothing landscape.

Most of these areas along the coast would be where the coastline ports of Numenor of old were located. So "largely nothing landscape" is a huge understatement, the ruins there might be better kept and more impressive than Cardolan. As for no one lives there, as usual, they can come up with something, to some degree (albeit no more Breelander stock please), and most of all they can make these more adventurous, character agency driven explorations. Like Fangorn questing, for example (No one lives there and yet it was done). And yeah, most of all, the seat of brigands sounds about right. What's better than a lowland in-between settled Eriador, Rohan and Gondor? Although, we would need some kind of explanation for how they get by, I don't know, if there is no prey from raids, maybe they hunt or something.

1. That giant blank spot in the east. That area south of the River Running, east of Mirkwood, west of the Sea of Rhun, and north of Mordor. In all the Lord of the Rings maps I can recall seeing this has always been a giant blank spot with no details filled in, no marked towns, cities, or villages, and generally no implication of real habitation. Much like the areas above, I'm not really sure what good narrative reason we would have to go like 7-8 maps worth of what is presumed to be uninhabited flat grasslands?

Some wilds, open spaces and - rather than "no one lives there" - some lesser settlements, presumably under Rhun control. Plus, you have the whole Old Kingdom of Rhovanion thingy from the lore and it was seemingly relevant enough for there to be a marriage union between Rhovanion/Gondor (even though it led to Kin-strife), so one might only assume it actually covered all these lands and there would be ruins or even some lesser descendants there.

[Hierona]

Well, I don't think he is laughing :P No matter how seriously the devs approach our concerns/ravings, I guess... it's not so bad to see a more passionate, appreciative discussion about the game world as a response to new content whereas the general, vocal response seems to be regarding The Rock and not content itself? XD



I know it's very very unlikely that Sev's "sea salt" was in connection to icy waters but yeah, I really wouldn't mind seeing Forodwaith - or, firstly, everything before that in general. But yeah, that could actually include sea water and a pretty long coastline too, so never say never :P




East and North-east of Forochel is content worth of some regular updates + whole expansion, easily. And the landmasses here could be a little bit more empty wastes, with CardoSwan treatment in terms of how far they can push the open landmass size, so indeed they could cover lots of ground here. We could explore Eastern Forochel (including the whole Eastern shore line, stumble upon actual glaciers and such), Western Angmar (that's covered in snow, which would be in line with the original unrealized concept for that region), have the gap between Forochel, Northdowns and Angmar all covered, with road from the Ironspan (through not every nook and cranny traversable I guess), the road could even take us North towards more of the shoreline of this huge bay. But yeah we could also go into Iron Pass, and then North on the Rhovanion's side.


The idea of Forochel styled places but done in 2022+ is also a very attractive one. I don't mind ice and cold at all. Once the game takes us into Forodwaith proper, could even stumble upon *some* remnants of Morgoth's times, like that fortress from Rings of Power. There is also PLENTY of Angmarim related plot threads left hanging that could come into play here, plus Drugoth, plus Hobgoblins and their ice powers, Forodwaith really doesn't seem THAT far-fetched, all these things in the picture here. The Rhudaur oath-stone, as things stand, had to be moved somewhere, right. Iron Pass most likely, though maybe it won't remain there long and the Angmarim are planning to do something with it

Really Forodwaith is coming. Since the orcs are driven out of Gundabad it makes sense they are looking for a new place to live, and Forodwaith could be the perfect place for orcs to settle. Would love to see Glúrkub and Shúkurz and his gang. Would love to meet the crystal warg there and see what orcs can accomplish there, but I feel it should wait a bit so they have room to settle. Imagine a great orc city build by themself and slowly see them fit in with the other races of Middle-earth somewhat since they are living a bit seperate now.

[provamail10]

Current speculation about future development is mainly based on own wishes, or, at best, some guesses from Severlin/Scenario's words. I'd like to know if there's some real data available. Maybe Garan could tell anything about landmass changes.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Most of these areas along the coast would be where the coastline ports of Numenor of old were located. So "largely nothing landscape" is a huge understatement, the ruins there might be better kept and more impressive than Cardolan. As for no one lives there, as usual, they can come up with something, to some degree (albeit no more Breelander stock please), and most of all they can make these more adventurous, character agency driven explorations. Like Fangorn questing, for example (No one lives there and yet it was done). And yeah, most of all, the seat of brigands sounds about right. What's better than a lowland in-between settled Eriador, Rohan and Gondor? Although, we would need some kind of explanation for how they get by, I don't know, if there is no prey from raids, maybe they hunt or something.

The only port the Numenorians had along the coast was Lond Daer, from which they began their massive deforestation of the surrounding areas. Once it was too deforested they moved upriver and founded Tharbad, and went down the coast and founded Pelargir and Umbar. Lond Daer even came to mean "Great Middle Haven" because it was the singular port between the Grey Havens, and Pelargir.

Its also stated that the Numenorians never had any permanent settlements in Enedwaith, either before Numenor's downfall, or after the founding of Gondor and Arnor, besides Tharbad. With neither Kingdom caring about the area except in regards to maintaining the road. After Tharbad was abandoned, only Dunland remained inhabited by the former Enedwaith natives that got pushed out of their forests due to the Numenorias felling, and Sauron's burning.

Minhiriath is in a similar position, with the Unfinished Tales saying "a few secretive hunter folk" remained in the Eryn Vorn. This doesn't describe the kind of force needed to explain the brigands, nor does it really make sense to be the brigands' seat. These kind of people make a living by kidnapping, robbing, and stealing from others. One does not base their operations in an area that is, in universe, hundreds of miles from the nearest source of any significant habitation(Shire/Breeland). That doesn't led itself to effective or efficient operations. If anything these people would be against Sauron/Saruman given that they had previously betted on Sauron pushing the Numenorians out, so they could reclaim their forests, only for Sauron to instead burn what remained to the ground.

And Fangorn did have "people" living there, specifically the Ents, and very easily ties into the established lore of Saruman tearing down the Fangorn for lumber for his projects.

Well, we discussed it here and we pretty much seem to be in agreement that these are PERFECT for alternate to Moria or alternate to Rohan solutions, for lvl ranges. They're also empty enough sandbox (in terms of lore) for devs to play in and come up with completely original quests/stories that wouldn't really tie too much into existing stories/characters, so it doesn't really seem off/conflict with anything established/destabilizes the flow of old stories. You can really see how careful they needed to be when telling stories in CardoSwan, for example.

As for what there is and can be done with lore - I would say brigands, "Southerners," maybe half-orcs as well, if they are more than just transformed Dunlendings (they seem too well established/super loyal to be just that, whereas Saruman's sway over Dunland and his Dunlendings captives for experimentation are fairly recent). I thought that's kinda what they were going for with Cardolan but turned out not really - which is actually even better now, because Minhiriath/Southern Enedwaith can easily be turned into something like Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Stolen Lands. We've been stuck with all these "expansionist" brigands on Eriador's side for ages now... would be nice to have some lore explanation for them. Some would be locals, like Blackwolds, but many of them would not, specifically those in service of Sharkey and very organized. So... where the heck are they coming from? They can't just manifest from nowhere. I mean, it's even true for Swanfleet, there is specifically a quest that says they showed up all of a sudden, erected fortified camp almost overnight and started to offer "protection" and do raids. So yeah, Stolen Lands... it really does sound a lot like Stolen Lands... I mean, I can easily imagine some self-styled king of the brigands with a seat atop a ruined Numenorean keep :P Maybe he even fancies himself a king of Numenor or something :P

I don't see this as happening, or even being particularly likely.

While SSG has been adding new alternating leveling/starting zones inside the established path, they've shown no real interest in making a whole other path. I can't imagine the narrative handwavium needed to go from "hey guys, so we know you just took down Angmar/Mordirith/Amarthiel and now you can chose to go through Moria and/or Rohan, some of the most iconic locals in LOTR lore.... or you can spend like 10 maps goofing off in literally, canonically, uninhabited wilderness and skirt along the coast until you get to western Gondor, or come into Rohan for Helms Deep" Not to mention what player in their right mind would chose that path given the alternative?

And why would Saruman send so many into such a region in the first place? The brigands/half orcs being up and down the road at least makes some sense to try to cut off communication between the north and south, and begin to establish a line of dominance from Orthanc to Bree/Shire, but, again, the Numenorians/Arnorians/Gondorians, never had settlements in Enedwaith outside of along the road, so hes not going to plunder some ancient trove of Nemenorian artifacts or anything by sending so many there, and I doubt the brigands who signed up for "pillaging, looting, robbing, kidnapping, murder, etc" are going to be particularly happy about being told "go here and make a functioning town" and all the burdens that entails. If they were into that they wouldn't be brigands in the first place, they would just be settlers.

Though I could see them jamming the West-March, and the Druwaith Iaur onto the extreme bottom on the Eriador map is they really wanted to make a land bridge between Dunland and the forests where some more of the Pukel men supposedly live.

Lindon is perfectly isolated, so they don't really have such a big issue like in other places, to be honest. They can have just two roads towards it though the Mountain Pass infested by goblins and the currently closed gate, in the past labelled as "to Sarnur" (not the dungeon, the land/city). Plus on the river but no low level player would try that I imagine. Quite recently MoL said that they indeed do have plans/eyes set on before and after, so please can we stop with this "Grey Havens will be the end of the game!" myth. :P There is nothing stopping them from thoroughly exploring this entire bay and surrounding lands, and even Frodo's passing doesn't mean all possible threats must be gone. For starters, they have completely unscathed Blue-crag goblins who were active in the area, Dourhands might come into play as well.

The Blue-crag goblins were the idea I had considered if they did do these lands either early, or late game. Either cleaning up some of the few remaining forces of Sauron if late game, or trying into the recent invasion we see in Erid Luin if early game. It just feels weird either way.

You can't really have Anfalas for the Corsairs because they don't have a narrative right to remain in Gondor anymore and were completely routed, otherwise what would be the point of the Oath-breakers?

So I don't really agree with this logic.

Yes the Corsair's were routed, but its incredibly rare, to the point of almost ever happening, that you achieve such a total victory that there remains literally no remaining enemy forces. There's always remnants, and we didn't exactly kill off every single corsairs in Gondor before we reached Minas Tirith either. What Corsairs remained could have fled east into the largely uninhabited, and thus undefended, Anfalas region. The plot I had in mind however wasn't even some big "we need to fight some huge Corsair army" plot or anything like that. The idea I had that was Aragorn sends us to Anfalas to clean up the Corsair stragglers, and investigate rumors of some sort of infighting between them. We get there, and find the Corsairs have broken into two factions, one who are still hellbent on vengeance against Gondor, despite having obviously lost and this not being productive for them, and another who are willing to go "yeah Gondor beat us, lets go home and just be normal pirates again" with Jajax, and his brother Daxamat, either being part of, or leaders in, the latter faction. Him roping us into helping him clean up the remnants in Gondor, and then going to Umbar briefly to help his side gain control of the port city to end the conflict.

I'm generally against the idea of going into Rhun, Khand, or Harad, proper. It doesn't make sense we would survive long in those lands given how many thousands of years they've been controlled either by Melkor, or Sauron, and thus the people would be naturally hostile against people from the north and west, and it doesn't make sense Aragon would be sending any large army into them any time soon given how much needs to be rebuilt in Gondor(not to mention the operations into Mordor), but Umbar being in some ways isolated, and being able to have a self contained, somewhat small, story there.

Some wilds, open spaces and - rather than "no one lives there" - some lesser settlements, presumably under Rhun control. Plus, you have the whole Old Kingdom of Rhovanion thingy from the lore and it was seemingly relevant enough for there to be a marriage union between Rhovanion/Gondor (even though it led to Kin-strife), so one might only assume it actually covered all these lands and there would be ruins or even some lesser descendants there.

The lands of Rhun are generally desbired as being the lands to the east of the Sea of Rhun. The blank spot shouldn't be under Rhun control. And my lore-fu is a bit weak here, but what I can read on the LOTR wiki, and Tolken Gateway, about the old Kingdom of Rhovanion is that its peoples/lands were in the northern and Middle Mirkwood, in the vales of Anduin, between north Mirkwood and the Grey Mountains, and east of Mirkwood and just south of the River Running. That area would be included in the Middle Mirkwood/Fields of Celduin/Barding Lands/Dorwinion areas, not in that giant blank spot between the Brown Lands, Sea of Rhun, and Mordor.

[TesalionLortus]

The only port the Numenorians had along the coast was Lond Daer, from which they began their massive deforestation of the surrounding areas. Once it was too deforested they moved upriver and founded Tharbad, and went down the coast and founded Pelargir and Umbar. Lond Daer even came to mean "Great Middle Haven" because it was the singular port between the Grey Havens, and Pelargir.

Its also stated that the Numenorians never had any permanent settlements in Enedwaith, either before Numenor's downfall, or after the founding of Gondor and Arnor, besides Tharbad.

Was this really ultimately stated that it was "the only one" or more like the only one ever mentioned? One could imagine there would be some accompanying settlements/structures/outposts/fortifications/even additional lesser ports, not just a single lone port and nothing else.

Minhiriath is in a similar position, with the Unfinished Tales saying "a few secretive hunter folk" remained in the Eryn Vorn. This doesn't describe the kind of force needed to explain the brigands, nor does it really make sense to be the brigands' seat. These kind of people make a living by kidnapping, robbing, and stealing from others. One does not base their operations in an area that is, in universe, hundreds of miles from the nearest source of any significant habitation(Shire/Breeland). That doesn't led itself to effective or efficient operations. If anything these people would be against Sauron/Saruman given that they had previously betted on Sauron pushing the Numenorians out, so they could reclaim their forests, only for Sauron to instead burn what remained to the ground.

If anything, I would say once they fell under Saruman's sway, they migrated North, specifically for spoils and such. It all depends on the kind of story they might come up with, but given Cardolan treatment or things from the past like Eglain devs are very flexible, which they gotta do for needs of the game, so I'm sure they would be able to come up with something interesting and within limits. I doubt any current populace of these regions would be particularly angry about the past. "A few secretive hunter folk" could be turned into what became a basis for our brigands, I guess. Maybe a prey gotten less and less. Maybe a few still linger. But maybe the majority gave in to raids (kinda like Vikings), plus then started moving North/swore fealty to Saruman. I think I already said it somewhere, but I guess you could even have some positive history between them and Saruman, before he turned extreme bad guy. Like maybe he tried to help them cultivate the land where nothing would grow or something. Which would be the reason why they remained loyal to him, or maybe some of them got turned into half-orcs later on as a means for strength and survival, once Saruman started taking advantage of them as his assets in war. I'm just randomly brain-storming now, but I guess something could be done and Saruman was one of the good guys at some point, after all. As the bad guy, I can easily imagine him giving some kind of a "promised land in the North" speech and why such a people would remain loyal to him, even in his defeat (I know, there is the Voice, but seriously, Voice alone can only do as much and would be more useful with specific individuals, not populations).

And Fangorn did have "people" living there, specifically the Ents, and very easily ties into the established lore of Saruman tearing down the Fangorn for lumber for his projects.

Th ents of Fangorn were sparsely involved in questing though - questing was more about the PC exploring the wilderness of the forest and solving mysteries on their own, so that's the kind of questing that would be very fitting for places like Minhiriath.

I don't see this as happening, or even being particularly likely.

While SSG has been adding new alternating leveling/starting zones inside the established path, they've shown no real interest in making a whole other path. I can't imagine the narrative handwavium needed to go from "hey guys, so we know you just took down Angmar/Mordirith/Amarthiel and now you can chose to go through Moria and/or Rohan, some of the most iconic locals in LOTR lore.... or you can spend like 10 maps goofing off in literally, canonically, uninhabited wilderness and skirt along the coast until you get to western Gondor, or come into Rohan for Helms Deep" Not to mention what player in their right mind would chose that path given the alternative?

I'm pretty sure they would love to fill the entire map... given a chance. So... I think very likely :P (given a chance)

There are many people who hate Rohan and/or Moria, and I'm sure they would love that kind of adventure-driven open wilderness as alternative, that's why. Also, no, these wouldn't be "legit Epic Story routes" in the narrative, because indeed, that would be messy and pointless. The legit story needs to guide players throgh Moria, Rohan, Gondor and beyond because all these places introduce characters or story hooks that emerge in later stories and you can't supplement that with alternate Epic book (like they did with Before the Shadow) because that wouldn't work. With BtS it was easier, since nothing before Angmar's plot is particularly important, Amdir is hardly mentioned ever again and Skorgrim himself, while seemingly important, is dealt with rather quickly at Gabilazan - and that's the Book that they actually kept and where they guide BtS players to, so all is well. Granted, BtS players won't meet some characters, like Atli Spider-bane, but our reunion with him in Mordor is rather ambiguous and open-ended, so that's fine too. However, if there was a "legit" Epic path that has you miss Theodhen, Theodred, Gandalf the White, Iron Garrison, you name it, that would be a confusing mess and outright lie offered to new players because that would be no legit "Epic book" at all. So yeah, we don't need confusion like that.

When I'm thinking of such expansion-sized alternate zones, I'm thinking quest pack stories, not Epics. You do it if you wanna do it, but if Epic on-level is what a player wanna do - then they go Moria/Dunland/Rohan for Epics, and maybe they can go back and do extra stories from Minihiriath later or maybe they just do these on their alt.

Yes the Corsair's were routed, but its incredibly rare, to the point of almost ever happening, that you achieve such a total victory that there remains literally no remaining enemy forces. There's always remnants, and we didn't exactly kill off every single corsairs in Gondor before we reached Minas Tirith either. What Corsairs remained could have fled east into the largely uninhabited, and thus undefended, Anfalas region.

The canon idea was that forces at Tarlag's Crown were to make a surprise attack on Anfalas. That was dealt with pretty brutally too, by rough ghosts. Now, I can see some remnants of the Corsairs remain, but they would be largely without weapons - the entire point of terror inflicted by the Oath-breakers is that they don't even need to inflict physical pain, the opponents just abandon everything and flee. That, plus Corsairs, when disorganized, they are no army, they pirates, and they wouldn't have any Haradrims with them there either. I can see some of them turning to some base brigandry, tacked away in the safety of some caves and such, without means to return home - they freaking lost all their ships , don't forget. So we could have a small story around that and maybe some of them wanna surrender, in hopes of getting home maybe. But nowhere near "it's the main plot of the region because there are just so many Corasirs and Corsair camps to deal with!" all over the place. That would be super off.

The plot I had in mind however wasn't even some big "we need to fight some huge Corsair army" plot or anything like that. The idea I had that was Aragorn sends us to Anfalas to clean up the Corsair stragglers, and investigate rumors of some sort of infighting between them. We get there, and find the Corsairs have broken into two factions, one who are still hellbent on vengeance against Gondor, despite having obviously lost and this not being productive for them, and another who are willing to go "yeah Gondor beat us, lets go home and just be normal pirates again" with Jajax, and his brother Daxamat, either being part of, or leaders in, the latter faction. Him roping us into helping him clean up the remnants in Gondor, and then going to Umbar briefly to help his side gain control of the port city to end the conflict.

Jajax and his brother already left, from how it was framed in canon. Besides, Anfalas is in opposite direction, and with war still ongoing and Pelennor still to be fought, they would want to move towards home as quickly as possible, would be dumb/contrived to row the other way to Anfalas to get some badly supplied routed men who themselves don't have any ships. Plus, what I said earlier, really not keen on the idea of Umbar because "Jajax asked this!" or "Aragorn sends to investigate" when there are more DIRE dangers remaining in Middle-earth so much closer home, of greater interest to Aragorn, our PC and the Wise. Would be a dumb premise. Jajax is a cool character no doubt, but the entire genius of it being fun and intriguing would have been easily lost too... if he was suddenly your regular good guy "never do evil no more" beacon of light for his people acting in Aragorn's interest. But if his characterization stays interesting and consistent, then makes literally no sense for Aragorn to lose one of his reliable friends and say "hey, go help this pirate, maybe it'll pay off or maybe it won't" - we literally met the guy when his crew slaughtered and raided an entire Gondorian village of innocents... he and his brother have their code of honor and such, but they still pirates, they're anti-heroes with a soft spot whose goals aligned with the PC and took a liking to him/her, not outright heroes, so not exactly trustful enough. Plus Umbar is no military threat either right now, so no reason for Aragorn to turn his attention towards it just yet. Actually, it's very much in his interest to sit and enjoy the victory (with much to do and secure home) as Harad/Umbar get to suffer in internal conflicts and struggles, with different factions emerging, not to send his agent to help sort out these affairs and give one party a steering wheel in hopes that "they're good now without Sauron, it'll somehow work out".

I'm generally against the idea of going into Rhun, Khand, or Harad, proper. It doesn't make sense we would survive long in those lands given how many thousands of years they've been controlled either by Melkor, or Sauron, and thus the people would be naturally hostile against people from the north and west, and it doesn't make sense Aragon would be sending any large army into them any time soon given how much needs to be rebuilt in Gondor(not to mention the operations into Mordor), but Umbar being in some ways isolated, and being able to have a self contained, somewhat small, story there.

Umbar isn't exactly self-isolated, it's pretty close to Harad and might have a hand in its affairs - or rather, be subject to its affairs (depending on who is stronger, alliances etc). I would be more understanding of escapade to Rhun - because there are important story setups and events there that may make our character solo interference (without any armies) easier and narratively understood for quite important reasons. Khand is more likely too, I guess, once we get though Nurn, because it's close by and might be a pretty adventurous land, rather than politically involved in some way (it's kind of an anomaly right next to Sauron's dominion, they hardly served him, they served money lol would be nice to delve into that and how it came to be). But yeah, Umbar and Harad proper especially are massive landmasses that I would rather see with armies at our backs (so maybe Fourth Age, with a gentle time skip at some point, as one of early escapades of Aragorn and Eomer)

The lands of Rhun are generally desbired as being the lands to the east of the Sea of Rhun. The blank spot shouldn't be under Rhun control.

That Rhun proper exists on the Eastern side doesn't mean its kingdom doesn't control/influence some of the surrounding areas. I'm pretty sure they control the entire Sea. Plus, it's fairly natural to assume they control at least some of that blank spot, given how in the game we already have "to Rhun" in the Wastes beyond Lhang Rhuven, and its effectively a functional road that connected them with Sauron's domain and where armies marched back and forth over the years no doubt. Who wouldn't control the areas adjacent to a strategic path like that?

[Phantion]

I can solve our Anfalas / Corsair dilemma, I think.

First off, we haven't really received much "game lore" as to what happened to the Corsair fleet as they sailed to Gondor. For all we know, there could've been a big storm. Maybe the Fleet started even larger than the "lore says" when they left Umbar but part of the Fleet got caught in the storm, some of the vessels sank, and some landed / crash-landed far a-field on the shores of Anfalas.

We already know that the Corsairs intended to slow things down and harry Gondor's coasts before heading to Minas Tirith. So, these Corsairs could've decided to just plunder Anfalas, and Golasgil, by that point, would have already left with his forces. This part of Gondor is probably the least defended and the least defensive with far smaller populations and not nearly enough soldiers left behind to defend it. So, these Corsairs could have taken Anfalas - unbeknownst to all else - and it could have taken well beyond the War of the Ring for one lone "messenger" to slip away without notice and make it to Dol Amroth to find that the Prince and company are all the way in Minas Tirith for Aragorn and Arwen's Wedding and have virtually no soldiers yet to spare - given the majority of West Gondor's forces went to relieve Minas Tirith and fight at the Black Gate.

So, now you have a real problem: that Aragorn, with all his other daily business going on as King, simply assumed all was well in Anfalas and didn't know what's going on - until this lone messenger shows up, weary and beaten and covered with wounds, telling his new King the truth. Aragorn summons Imrahil, a whole mass contingent of Swan-Knights, and summons the Player - and off we go to liberate Anfalas!!! Then we have a story - and perhaps, to inspire Anfalas' enslaved population as we help them rebel, we tell them the tale of how Golasgil died valiantly at the Black Gate - and we overcome the Corsairs.

Now, this would not take - anything away - from the Army of the Dead. Why? Because that was all about the main Fleet - the Scourge - and commandeering the Fleet to save Minas Tirith. All of that happened - and that was the point.

In this premise, the Corsairs in Anfalas / Andrast don't know that Sauron is defeated. They are hundreds upon hundreds of leagues away from getting any sort of news. They know nothing of the Fleet, and their greed for local riches takes them away from their main purpose. One of their Captains decides not to follow the Scourge anymore - and they all flock to this Captain. But some of them privately loathe not only the Captain but Sauron himself - and these, the Player persuades to turn "Jajax" and overcome them.

Then, we have a plot - and a purpose - and along with Imrahil's forces and the Corsair rebels and the Anfalas locals, we thwart the evil leader and take back Anfalas for Gondor and start to rebuild - and Golasgil's heir, perhaps enslaved and a hostage, takes his / her rightful Seat. Aragorn and Arwen then arrive themselves and a new era of peace begins as Aragorn and Arwen tour the farther reaches of their realm.

I see nothing wrong with that kind of plot - and indeed would find it little different than the stuff we did in Strongholds of the North. It just makes sense, at least to me.

There's also some real world precedence. Some World War I battles kept raging even after Armistice had been signed until the news reached the commanders. Some World War II conflicts in the Pacific kept raging even after the formal, announced ending of World War II in the Pacific Theatre because they were all further afield and had no way of receiving the news that the war had ended. I could see a similar tale happening with some "blown-off-course and/or shipwrecked" Corsairs in Far Gondor.

The Devs will decide what they may. Honestly, I'll be far more surprised if Corsairs - don't - show up in some form - like how we have White Hand all over the place in Eriador, Taurogrim all over the place near North Mirkwood and its surrounds, Angmar all over the place in Elderslade and Car Bronach even though Angmar had been "formally defeated," how we still fought some Haradrim and Easterlings in Gorgoroth, and I could list far more examples than these. If they need a type of mob in a particular zone, they'll come up with a narrative reason for it.

*Also, there's a way to involve Ered Nimrais Dwarves in that plot. Maybe they kept to themselves and their halls, like the Elven-King in "The Hobbit" who wanted nothing to do with Thorin's quest to begin with, and didn't pay much attention to what's happening outside their halls. Maybe the Gemcutters, on their way back from Enedwaith, get attacked by some of these Corsairs - and fled to Erebor instead, without the White Mountains Dwarves getting any word about it until they realize their trade got disrupted. Maybe even some Dunlendings, still loyal to their cause to a fault, slipped down from Dunland through the gap in the mountains (*avoiding Westmarch) and started helping the Corsairs (*a nod to the lore when Dunland and Umbar briefly teamed-up during the time of Freca and Wulf) - and you could have that angle also. Maybe parts of Far Gondor look like a combination of Enedwaith and Gondor in its looks - which would also give a geographic nod to Cardolan and give the impression it's a wilder, less settled part of Gondor. Maybe the Dwarves even start trading with the Corsairs and make a big mistake - and maybe Player has to resolve this, and Gimli has some choice words for them later!

*In short: They need to world-build something to make those zones. Would it sound a bit contrived to invent Corsair survivors of a storm? Perhaps - but if the alternative is "no content," I'll still take it- tyvm I'd have to admit that even "Angmar's resurrection" is contrived if I went that far, and honestly, the game needs to invent these kinds of situations in places Tolkien otherwise left empty to make them game-worthy places to visit. Maybe some Druedain migrated southeast of Druwaith Iaur - and that angle could enter into play as well

Another thing I didn't give as much to are the "Maiar angle." Maybe there are more River-Maidens like Roaming Star - or other mysterious beings like the Huntsman - out in Far Gondor who could play a unique role.

That's really my point: Consider Enedwaith! A place of virtually "no lore" other than a few tiny little tidbits like the exile of Erebor's Dwarves. Yet they managed to include Stoors, Dunlendings, Dwarves, Elven ruins, Gondor ruins, Gaunt-Lords / Barrow-downs-esque places, the Huntsman and the mysteries of the Mournshaws . . . I do not doubt the Devs' creativity even once in these remote places.

Cheers!

[TesalionLortus]

There's also some real world precedence. Some World War I battles kept raging even after Armistice had been signed until the news reached the commanders. Some World War II conflicts in the Pacific kept raging even after the formal, announced ending of World War II in the Pacific Theatre because they were all further afield and had no way of receiving the news that the war had ended. I could see a similar tale happening with some "blown-off-course and/or shipwrecked" Corsairs in Far Gondor.

That's not such a bad idea, actually. Although I still wouldn't make them large enough force and maybe let them be a threat/in control through some kind of trickery rather than outright occupation. Or maybe they joined with some wild orcs that came from White Mountains or something like that, these have unique models and would be a nice change to see them again. Why I say not large enough force to pull that on their own? A few ships lost may be ok, but if that was more, it would have been kinda off with earlier storyline - since that would be a direct heavy toll for their fleet, in this situation a little weird for them to still manage to leave an optional force to invade Anfalas from Crown. Plus, even if unlucky due to the storm, the survivors would have lost some supplies to the sea, so not an ideal situation to do war, even if it's just war against the defenseless and shallow militias. But generally, yeah, that's an intriguing idea if done right!

I'll be far more surprised if Corsairs - don't - show up in some form - like how we have White Hand all over the place in Eriador, Taurogrim all over the place near North Mirkwood and its surrounds, Angmar all over the place in Elderslade and Car Bronach even though Angmar had been "formally defeated," how we still fought some Haradrim and Easterlings in Gorgoroth, and I could list far more examples than these. If they need a type of mob in a particular zone, they'll come up with a narrative reason for it.

Most of these, while excessive in a "it's an mmo and needs mobs" way, made a lot of sense though, strategically. You would have White Hand goons spying around Eriador, you would have retreating Easterling/Haradrim left in reserves at Gorgoroth, as for Angmar recently, if you haven't noticed, they are characterized as mega zealots and almost terrorist kind of zealous (not even for Sauron, but for Witch-king! Or other cults, like Drugoth's), so it works very well. You couldn't possibly have the same kind of treatment given to Haradrim, Corsairs or Easterlings, and indeed Easterlings who lingered in the North were characterized pretty well in that regard, not many of those overall - some under Karazgar's sway near Dale and others in Iron Hills trying to take over a town and make it their own because they feared returning home, actually, due to rumors...

In general, the point is devs shouldn't just throw in some mobs everywhere because they need them, should give some narrative thought, especially now that we're in the After the Fall scenario on the timeline, and things may not always belong everywhere, plus we've been though piles of content with these specific things. I mean, with beasts and Taurogrim, ok, it's hardly jarring. But when it's humanoids or other "sentient" races like the Dourhands etc, there should be some restrain. Also, nothing stops them from coming up with brand new local factions, for example. Rather than just a Corsairs stirring trouble or orcs they can have something like a Whithered Tree stirring trouble. Maybe a region fell into lawlessness absent hope, garrisons, with news of war raging and Sauron armies matching upon Gondor. I welcome all new humanoid (or other) mobs introduced, even if just reskins of older ones. Doesn't always need to be "Haradrim!" "Corsairs!" "Generic brigands!" "Orcs!" etc.

I'd have to admit that even "Angmar's resurrection" is contrived if I went that far, and honestly, the game needs to invent these kinds of situations in places Tolkien otherwise left empty to make them game-worthy places to visit.

Kinda, but yeah, what I said above, Angmar turned out to be more hardcore/zealous than even Mordor guys, in a way, and thinking back they always felt a little bit more crazy and chaotic, so... that's a nice touch now. (Angmar = Chaotic Evil, Sauron = Lawful Evil/Neutral Evil)
Plus, I always wondered how was that supposed to work, we defeated Mordirith and Mordrambor, and what, a bunch of good hill-men with a few rangers moved in, and all fixed? So that they reappeared isn't even that off, even though I never really considered it before.

Another thing I didn't give as much to are the "Maiar angle." Maybe there are more River-Maidens like Roaming Star - or other mysterious beings like the Huntsman - out in Far Gondor who could play a unique role.

That is a great possibility, yes! Maybe someone of Ulmo this time...

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Was this really ultimately stated that it was "the only one" or more like the only one ever mentioned? One could imagine there would be some accompanying settlements/structures/outposts/fortifications/even additional lesser ports, not just a single lone port and nothing else.

From what lore says they founded Lond Daer, deforested the surrounding region, then went upstream and made Tharbad, and started again from there. Given that we know there was never any Numenorian settlements in Enedwaith, which Lond Daer sits on the border of, if they had any outlying facilities they weren't on the Enedwaith side. Does that really make a lot of sense? No, but Tolken did that a lot, especially with elven kingdoms which were always depicted as like one major city, and some outlying farms/estates, and not something like Rohan, or Gondor, with multiple large cities per kingdom. There were likely temporary work camps to help transport felled trees back to Lond Daer after they had cut down everything in the immediate area, but never any real permanent settlements. The Numenorians weren't trying to live in Eriador at the time, they were just using it as resource harvesting.

If anything, I would say once they fell under Saruman's sway, they migrated North, specifically for spoils and such. It all depends on the kind of story they might come up with, but given Cardolan treatment or things from the past like Eglain devs are very flexible, which they gotta do for needs of the game, so I'm sure they would be able to come up with something interesting and within limits. I doubt any current populace of these regions would be particularly angry about the past. "A few secretive hunter folk" could be turned into what became a basis for our brigands, I guess. Maybe a prey gotten less and less. Maybe a few still linger. But maybe the majority gave in to raids (kinda like Vikings), plus then started moving North/swore fealty to Saruman. I think I already said it somewhere, but I guess you could even have some positive history between them and Saruman, before he turned extreme bad guy. Like maybe he tried to help them cultivate the land where nothing would grow or something. Which would be the reason why they remained loyal to him, or maybe some of them got turned into half-orcs later on as a means for strength and survival, once Saruman started taking advantage of them as his assets in war. I'm just randomly brain-storming now, but I guess something could be done and Saruman was one of the good guys at some point, after all. As the bad guy, I can easily imagine him giving some kind of a "promised land in the North" speech and why such a people would remain loyal to him, even in his defeat (I know, there is the Voice, but seriously, Voice alone can only do as much and would be more useful with specific individuals, not populations).

Even if Saruman did sway the remaining peoples of the Eryn Vorn the descriptor of "a few secretive hunter folk" doesn't really justify the rather large army's worth of brigands and half orcs we see in the north. The forest dwellers in this small peninsula would only make up a very small minority of Saruman's forces, and doesn't really believably explain the origin of the brigands. There would be, at most, a handful of Hultvis sized woodsman villages there, given that the forest isn't even particularly big in the first place.

Also, Minhiriath is described as "..a land that was far and wide, on either bank a desert, treeless but untilled." in the unfinished tales, and Gandalf says " ..the waste in time will be waste no longer, and there will be people and fields where once there was wilderness." near the end of the books. In lore its a barren, treeless, region, with no real farming going on.

Th ents of Fangorn were sparsely involved in questing though - questing was more about the PC exploring the wilderness of the forest and solving mysteries on their own, so that's the kind of questing that would be very fitting for places like Minhiriath.

Not really? Even back in the Great River the quest inside the small big of Fangorn was the Ents trying to protect the forest and kill that spider from the Roots of Fangorn instance. In Wildermore its helping the Ents deal with Nurzum, in East Rohan its Gandalf telling you to help rouse the Ents, and in West Rohan the entire questchain is about Quickbeam and helping the Ents restore the forest and such. Everything about the Fangorn was ENTS ENTS ENTS! since its introduction back in the Great River.

I'm pretty sure they would love to fill the entire map... given a chance. So... I think very likely :P (given a chance)

There are many people who hate Rohan and/or Moria, and I'm sure they would love that kind of adventure-driven open wilderness as alternative, that's why. Also, no, these wouldn't be "legit Epic Story routes" in the narrative, because indeed, that would be messy and pointless. The legit story needs to guide players throgh Moria, Rohan, Gondor and beyond because all these places introduce characters or story hooks that emerge in later stories and you can't supplement that with alternate Epic book (like they did with Before the Shadow) because that wouldn't work. With BtS it was easier, since nothing before Angmar's plot is particularly important, Amdir is hardly mentioned ever again and Skorgrim himself, while seemingly important, is dealt with rather quickly at Gabilazan - and that's the Book that they actually kept and where they guide BtS players to, so all is well. Granted, BtS players won't meet some characters, like Atli Spider-bane, but our reunion with him in Mordor is rather ambiguous and open-ended, so that's fine too. However, if there was a "legit" Epic path that has you miss Theodhen, Theodred, Gandalf the White, Iron Garrison, you name it, that would be a confusing mess and outright lie offered to new players because that would be no legit "Epic book" at all. So yeah, we don't need confusion like that.

When I'm thinking of such expansion-sized alternate zones, I'm thinking quest pack stories, not Epics. You do it if you wanna do it, but if Epic on-level is what a player wanna do - then they go Moria/Dunland/Rohan for Epics, and maybe they can go back and do extra stories from Minihiriath later or maybe they just do these on their alt.

Filling in the map sure. Creating an entirely separate 2nd path leveling experience for people who dislike Moria/Rohan is something else entirely however. Doing it without epics makes it even less likely IMO. Creating an entirely separate 2nd leveling route, but NOT trying a the major story into it, just gives players the option to go on a separate leveling path, but wind up in a position where they have no idea whats going on because they missed the main story. I can't think of a game that lets you do that because thats such bad game design. Devs would need this sort of high level Epic narrative 2nd route to justify this idea, as thats the only way it would be financially feasible to put the effort into making a whole separate 2nd leveling path, instead of just adding small side areas onto the existing leveling path like they have with Yondershire, Wildwood, and Angle.

The canon idea was that forces at Tarlag's Crown were to make a surprise attack on Anfalas. That was dealt with pretty brutally too, by rough ghosts. Now, I can see some remnants of the Corsairs remain, but they would be largely without weapons - the entire point of terror inflicted by the Oath-breakers is that they don't even need to inflict physical pain, the opponents just abandon everything and flee. That, plus Corsairs, when disorganized, they are no army, they pirates, and they wouldn't have any Haradrims with them there either. I can see some of them turning to some base brigandry, tacked away in the safety of some caves and such, without means to return home - they freaking lost all their ships , don't forget. So we could have a small story around that and maybe some of them wanna surrender, in hopes of getting home maybe. But nowhere near "it's the main plot of the region because there are just so many Corasirs and Corsair camps to deal with!" all over the place. That would be super off.

Ghosts never did anything to the forces at Tarlag's Crown. Aragorn and his ghost army never went that way, and the ghost Nerzus that shows up at the end of the "First of the Heirs" instance only tells Azruthor that hes just another human, and that he will go meet up with Sauron without him. The ghosts never DO anything to the living forces at Tarlag's Crown.

Jajax and his brother already left, from how it was framed in canon. Besides, Anfalas is in opposite direction, and with war still ongoing and Pelennor still to be fought, they would want to move towards home as quickly as possible, would be dumb/contrived to row the other way to Anfalas to get some badly supplied routed men who themselves don't have any ships. Plus, what I said earlier, really not keen on the idea of Umbar because "Jajax asked this!" or "Aragorn sends to investigate" when there are more DIRE dangers remaining in Middle-earth so much closer home, of greater interest to Aragorn, our PC and the Wise. Would be a dumb premise. Jajax is a cool character no doubt, but the entire genius of it being fun and intriguing would have been easily lost too... if he was suddenly your regular good guy "never do evil no more" beacon of light for his people acting in Aragorn's interest. But if his characterization stays interesting and consistent, then makes literally no sense for Aragorn to lose one of his reliable friends and say "hey, go help this pirate, maybe it'll pay off or maybe it won't" - we literally met the guy when his crew slaughtered and raided an entire Gondorian village of innocents... he and his brother have their code of honor and such, but they still pirates, they're anti-heroes with a soft spot whose goals aligned with the PC and took a liking to him/her, not outright heroes, so not exactly trustful enough. Plus Umbar is no military threat either right now, so no reason for Aragorn to turn his attention towards it just yet. Actually, it's very much in his interest to sit and enjoy the victory (with much to do and secure home) as Harad/Umbar get to suffer in internal conflicts and struggles, with different factions emerging, not to send his agent to help sort out these affairs and give one party a steering wheel in hopes that "they're good now without Sauron, it'll somehow work out".

Yes Jajax left to go back to Umbar. The idea is that he would come back to try to get the remaining corsairs in Anfalas to leave Gondor, to try to prevent any sort of escalation of tensions now that Aragorn in on the throne, and Gondor has a king again. No one is saying hes going to be some shining beacon of do no more evil, I even said he wanted to go back to being just pirates. He just wants the people still trying to antagonize Gondor to stop because its not in Umbar's best interest. And, again, Aragorn would only care about sending us to Anfalas, not to Umbar. This wouldn't be an order by him to go to Umbar, since he obviously has more pressing matters like rebuilding Gondor, and relations with the Easterlings and Haradrim.

And I would debate that there are many dire situations in Middle Earth right now. With the reclamation of Gundabad by the Dwarves, the forces of the enemy have lost their last major stronghold out of Mordor. Even in Mordor, we hear during the Morgul Vale map that Gorgoroth has been largely secured, with Borangos the Horror vanishing off to who knows where, and Lhaereth the Stained and her flock likewise bailing on Seregost to come to the Morgul Vale, where they later fly off to who knows where after that. Angmar, Dol Guldur, Isengard, Gundabad, and even Gorgoroth, have all fallen. And on top of that, of the remaining powers in Mordor itself, Gothmog, Shelob, Rûkhor the Pale Herald, Dulgabêth the Black Word, and Ugrukhôr, Captain of the Pit, are dead for good. Karazgar the Weeping Warrior's plan in the north was foiled, and he just left to go into Rhun to find a cure for his condition(not to mention he never seem interested, and even explicit calls out that, he doesn't cae about the power play in Mordor in general). And Lhaereth's plague was destroyed, with it being explicitly stated it would be decades before she could make enough to pose a large threat with it.

We're actually a point narratively where there isn't really any major issues happening right now. The last two remaining real big bads, Borangos and Lhaereth, being MIA, and the only other major issue being a refugee issues in the north that is not only not Aragorn's problem, but theres been no suggestion by the refugees that whatever forced them to leave is following behind them and making its way to the western lands. Given that, according to dialogue, we got through Western, Central, and Eastern Gondor, as well as Old Anorian, and then met back up with the Rohirrium in Far Anorian in just 11 days after the Battle of Helms Deep. Going to Anfalas, and then sailing to Umbar, isn't exactly some huge trip. Like we'd be gone maybe a week or so.

Umbar isn't exactly self-isolated, it's pretty close to Harad and might have a hand in its affairs - or rather, be subject to its affairs (depending on who is stronger, alliances etc). I would be more understanding of escapade to Rhun - because there are important story setups and events there that may make our character solo interference (without any armies) easier and narratively understood for quite important reasons. Khand is more likely too, I guess, once we get though Nurn, because it's close by and might be a pretty adventurous land, rather than politically involved in some way (it's kind of an anomaly right next to Sauron's dominion, they hardly served him, they served money lol would be nice to delve into that and how it came to be). But yeah, Umbar and Harad proper especially are massive landmasses that I would rather see with armies at our backs (so maybe Fourth Age, with a gentle time skip at some point, as one of early escapades of Aragorn and Eomer)

Umbar is isolated enough that its been able to remain an independent city state from the rest of Harard for thousands of years, and isn't represented by Harard's emissary's during peace negotiations. With both groups armies being devastated by the war, Harard wouldn't exactly be able to come to Umbar's aid during an internal conflict like I'm suggesting.

Also, Umbar itself isn't very large area. Its a fortified city state, with some holdings in the immediately surrounding area, not a large nation akin to Gondor or Rohan or anything similar. It wouldn't be too much larger than Pelargir, given it being founded by the same people. They could do a map the size of something like Central Gondor, with a Pelargir sized, maybe slightly larger, sized Umbar in the middle along the coast, and some small outlying villages. If they wanted to get really adventurous they could do two maps with a combined space of like western and central Gondor for Umbar, but it isn't going to need like Rohan, or Gondor, got in terms of size.

Though I would say Khand is probably the least likely of the places we would go. Its stated Sauron chose Mordor as his base because the mountains covering three sides of it only had two real passes through it, that being Morgul Vale, and where the Black gate was built. Even if we got Nurn they would have to add even more maps leading around the mountains into Khand, and given how little its people showed up, even given the dev's expansion of lore on other groups like the Haradrim, Corsairs, and Easterlings, its probably pretty far down on the list. Though I'm generally pretty against going to Rhun, Harad, or Khand, proper. There's another near decad'es worth of areas to go in the known parts of Middle Earth, not even coutning the blank spot in the Rhovanian, and the deserted coastal regions of Eriador.

That Rhun proper exists on the Eastern side doesn't mean its kingdom doesn't control/influence some of the surrounding areas. I'm pretty sure they control the entire Sea. Plus, it's fairly natural to assume they control at least some of that blank spot, given how in the game we already have "to Rhun" in the Wastes beyond Lhang Rhuven, and its effectively a functional road that connected them with Sauron's domain and where armies marched back and forth over the years no doubt. Who wouldn't control the areas adjacent to a strategic path like that?

Well the Wastes map doesn't have "To Rhun" on it. And the area of Dorwinion, in lore, is never stated to be part of the Kingdoms of Rhun. It was part of Gondor at one point in the past, and the Sindarian name of the region would indicate either elvish, or Numenorian, influence. Easterlings likely have a large presence there, but the area itself isn't part of Rhun, its a borderland. Rhun is generally considered to be the last east of the sea, not the sea itself.

And as for the Wastes road, the people of Rhun wouldn't need to use it to connect to Sauron. The entire back end of Mordor is open since there is no mountains on that side. The Wastes path is the long way around for them to read Mordor, and presumably used mainly to flank forces trying to invade Mordor, as we see in the Wastes, and hear about in the "Storm of Wrath" during Mordor besieged. Why would they need to protect the road north of Mordor? Neither Gondor nor Rohan have influence there, it isn't how the people of the east enter Mordor in the first place, no one is known to live in those lands, and its so right on the border they could just have a few orc patrolers and be done with it.

[TesalionLortus]

Does that really make a lot of sense? No, but Tolken did that a lot, especially with elven kingdoms which were always depicted as like one major city, and some outlying farms/estates, and not something like Rohan, or Gondor, with multiple large cities per kingdom.

I guess. Well, these are probably the cases where the devs lean towards being flexible, since otherwise there wouldn't be a game + the world wouldn't be exactly 100% believable, once you delve into it and start considering history, migrations, infrastructure and geopolitics. It's no fault of Tolkien of course. When you're an author, even a very scrupulous one, there are just some things you don't need to care about and delve too much into for the purposes of your story so they don't require much thought, they're just a footnote, after all. But I can easily imagine LOTRO's Lindon being a bit more settled, full with new elven homesteads for us, than just one city and otherwise an empty land.

Not really? Even back in the Great River the quest inside the small big of Fangorn was the Ents trying to protect the forest and kill that spider from the Roots of Fangorn instance. In Wildermore its helping the Ents deal with Nurzum, in East Rohan its Gandalf telling you to help rouse the Ents, and in West Rohan the entire questchain is about Quickbeam and helping the Ents restore the forest and such. Everything about the Fangorn was ENTS ENTS ENTS! since its introduction back in the Great River.

I meant more like the Eaves of Fangorn region specifically. Sure, you have things that focus around Ents - or more predominantly Huorns - but the quest design was different and no hub-to-hub at all. Was more adventurous, driven by our character choices to investigate and explore (with more PC's POV provided during questing, rather than just be told what to do by someone, in which case we hardly ever "hear" and "feel" from our PC's POV). That's the kind of quest design that would very fitting for more wild regions, given some premise of scouting/exploration/or maybe we pursue someone, lots of ways to make it work.




Scenario already said something like "There are different level ranges that need this treatment in the future," I think this was in one of CardoSwan related streams, though I don't remember the exact wording. But I think they're aware these are needed/desired.

Creating an entirely separate 2nd leveling route, but NOT trying a the major story into it, just gives players the option to go on a separate leveling path, but wind up in a position where they have no idea whats going on because they missed the main story. I can't think of a game that lets you do that because thats such bad game design. Devs would need this sort of high level Epic narrative 2nd route to justify this idea, as thats the only way it would be financially feasible to put the effort into making a whole separate 2nd leveling path, instead of just adding small side areas onto the existing leveling path like they have with Yondershire, Wildwood, and Angle.

Players CAN already level up and wind up in a position when they're largely over-levelled for Epic story content, with all these additional regions nonetheless... Players doing BtS, if they're newbies, might want to explore stories in Bree or Lonelands or Shire and Yondershire as well... some of them might use a Stone of the tortoise (I guess it would help if the stone was streamlined a bit more, like if you actually got that for free at the start), others may not and still find it acceptable that they over-level because they care about all these storylines, or some others might just quickly move on to level relevant content as they level up, not caring whether that's Epic or not. So I really don't think that's a problem and if anything, the enthusiasm for all these lower lvl regions proved it. More content = doesn't hurt (and I would welcome more sources of XP done in a different way, so free-roam works better across the world). Let the people go where they want. But yeah, storyline shouldn't become disjointed and messy, like WoW, should be clear where is a cohesive main storyline and where not.

the ghost Nerzus that shows up at the end of the "First of the Heirs" instance only tells Azruthor that hes just another human, and that he will go meet up with Sauron without him. The ghosts never DO anything to the living forces at Tarlag's Crown.

Sometimes the way LOTRO portrays such things is a little bit clunky, and I might have misremembered it, I thought he actually kills Azruthor in the end and it was indicative of "overreach was his doom" (and his forces), otherwise how would that entire force be actually dispelled here. Just the PC (and a couple of friends) did it? :P Well, maybe there were some Dol Amroth troops engaged too, idk.

We're actually a point narratively where there isn't really any major issues happening right now. The last two remaining real big bads, Borangos and Lhaereth, being MIA, and the only other major issue being a refugee issues in the north that is not only not Aragorn's problem, but theres been no suggestion by the refugees that whatever forced them to leave is following behind them and making its way to the western lands. Given that, according to dialogue, we got through Western, Central, and Eastern Gondor, as well as Old Anorian, and then met back up with the Rohirrium in Far Anorian in just 11 days after the Battle of Helms Deep. Going to Anfalas, and then sailing to Umbar, isn't exactly some huge trip. Like we'd be gone maybe a week or so.

Well, except Borangos gone into a volcano IS very troubling, the remaining Gurzyul (other than Karazgar, I mean) sound like they should take a priority, which is almost undoubtedly in Nurn, and, while not Aragorn's worry atm, our PC and others should be concerned/interested in the mysteries of Rhun, since it's nowhere near "ah, who cares" and sounds really terrible. Plus, considering the PC is an alive specimen and not a robot, after hearing a word of this anyone with their right mind including Aragorn would immediately send someone and the PC to handle the Angmarim situation up North, close to Eriador, because it's super troubling. So not THAT comfy...

It wouldn't be too much larger than Pelargir, given it being founded by the same people. They could do a map the size of something like Central Gondor, with a Pelargir sized, maybe slightly larger, sized Umbar in the middle along the coast, and some small outlying villages. If they wanted to get really adventurous they could do two maps with a combined space of like western and central Gondor for Umbar, but it isn't going to need like Rohan, or Gondor, got in terms of size.

Yet still many of us here believe Gondor feels a little bit undersized/condensed - as a kingdom - so maybe they shouldn't just do that to Umbar too (which isn't a big big kingdom and more like a city state, but certainly a powerful one, with some fiefdoms and such, maybe even vassals among neighboring inland states, if you take Berúthiel's story into account). Ah, I got it in the back of my mind, that I was to go through a quest text in Gondor and search for it, but I do recall some hints of the Heirs being a bit more like "the Gurzyul of the Umbar-controlled domain" so they might be scattered in control of different territories. But I'm not exactly sure on this, whether I recall correctly. Plus, Umbar and its bay as biomes... such tremendous opportunity to make it bombastic and super modern, swimmable from one shore to another, including islands along the coasts, with areas all around, and then up river past Umbar. I truly believe that's a jewel among jewels in terms how wild and bombastic you could be, and that maybe... it is something to better keep in reserve if they can actually have these traversable boats a few years from now or so... you know, pirates, swimmable boats, quests on waters, island housing... It's like a Joker in your deck but using it prematurely might not exactly be wise and we still have so many things we could possibly go to.

Well the Wastes map doesn't have "To Rhun" on it.

And as for the Wastes road, the people of Rhun wouldn't need to use it to connect to Sauron. The entire back end of Mordor is open since there is no mountains on that side. The Wastes path is the long way around for them to read Mordor, and presumably used mainly to flank forces trying to invade Mordor, as we see in the Wastes, and hear about in the "Storm of Wrath" during Mordor besieged. Why would they need to protect the road north of Mordor? Neither Gondor nor Rohan have influence there, it isn't how the people of the east enter Mordor in the first place, no one is known to live in those lands, and its so right on the border they could just have a few orc patrolers and be done with it.

Ah true, I thought there was an actual text written there. But still, it is a road and clearly fortified at Lhang Rhuven and supposedly from where these troops came from (and how they return to Rhun after the battle, this is also the same road our Variag pals take, apparently, so it must be convenient and... who *would want* to go through Mordor if they don't have to?). Plus, not Gondor and Rohan, but they do have Dale, Erebor and Dorwinion people to contend with, so not unwise to have strategic routes secured.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Ah true, I thought there was an actual text written there. But still, it is a road and clearly fortified at Lhang Rhuven and supposedly from where these troops came from (and how they return to Rhun after the battle, this is also the same road our Variag pals take, apparently, so it must be convenient and... who *would want* to go through Mordor if they don't have to?). Plus, not Gondor and Rohan, but they do have Dale, Erebor and Dorwinion people to contend with, so not unwise to have strategic routes secured.

Counterpoint, the people of Rhun don't do any real trading with the nations of the west like Gondor and Rohan, their only western ally is Mordor. Why would they take the road that leads into the blasted Plateau of Gorgoroth, which is mainly used as a army staging ground and weapons manufacturing area, when they can take the back entrance and come into Nurn and Lithlad which is where the actual "normal" people live, and is generally considered to be much better environmentally?

Also, while I don't think it was ever canonically established, Mirkwood is generally assumed to be around 600 miles north to south based on distances Tolken gave for other things. Dale, and Erebor, are to the east of the northern end of the forest, and while the Sea of Rhun/Dorwinion is near the southern end, with there still being significant distance between Dorwinion and Mordor. Dorwinion would still be hundreds of miles from this Mordor road, and Dale, and Erebor, aren't going to be projecting power nearly 1,000 miles from their center. The Kingdom of Dale is like Dale, Laketown, and Utterby. They barely have the manpower to protect their small region, much less actively harass a road that far away. The Dwarves would be too busy doing dwarf stuff in the mountains.

Well, except Borangos gone into a volcano IS very troubling, the remaining Gurzyul (other than Karazgar, I mean) sound like they should take a priority, which is almost undoubtedly in Nurn, and, while not Aragorn's worry atm, our PC and others should be concerned/interested in the mysteries of Rhun, since it's nowhere near "ah, who cares" and sounds really terrible. Plus, considering the PC is an alive specimen and not a robot, after hearing a word of this anyone with their right mind including Aragorn would immediately send someone and the PC to handle the Angmarim situation up North, close to Eriador, because it's super troubling. So not THAT comfy...

We don't know Borangos went into the volcano. If he had the ability to get whatever it is he seeks under the volcano previously he would've done it before, and nothing narratively has suggested he gained the ability to do so off screen. All we know is that he vanished, seemingly due to the progress of the "Conquest of Gorgorth" campaign. He could've fled into Nurn for whatever reason, for all we know. If he had gone into the volcano, one would think it would've been seen given that much of Gorgorth has been claimed by the group. Similarly, as of right now the gate into Nurn is closed, and hasn't been able to be opened. We can't get into Nurn/Lithlad to deal with the remaining two Gurzyul(not counting Urudani who is with Barangos) until that happens, so thats something of a back burner issue right now. Especially since they didn't seem to take part in the power play in Gorgorth, and haven't made any overt moves since Sauron's fall. Hell, Aragorn might not even know about the other two since we only learned of the other two because of a brief comment by Karazgar in the Vales of Anduin.

And the Angmarim situation isn't THAT troubling. As mentioned before, its very rare, to the point of almost never happening, that one achieves such a total victory against an enemy that they're completely wiped out to the last. Remnants exist, and will do so for years, if not decades, after the fact. Angmar is still in ruins, and we know from the "rounding up the Grey company" storyline that its coffers are drained due to infighting, looting, and spending what little remained on hiring mercs to keep some semblance of power propped up. With Gundabad being reclaimed by the Dwarves, and most of the Northern Rangers still being in the north doing ops there, Aragorn has little reason to not just leave it up to the Dwarves/Northern Rangers.

As for Rhun, Aragorn is likely stuck in a complex political situation. He is the king of Gondor, him ordering agents into Rhun, a hostile land that has yet to declare peace with Gondor, or make any peaceful overtures like one of the Harad kingdoms did in the Allegiance storyline, could be seen as an act of war, a prelude to invasion. Even if refugeees from Rhun came to Minas Tirith to ask for help he would have to weigh that against the backlash from whatever group, or groups, such as the Jangovar, still hold power in those lands.

Sometimes the way LOTRO portrays such things is a little bit clunky, and I might have misremembered it, I thought he actually kills Azruthor in the end and it was indicative of "overreach was his doom" (and his forces), otherwise how would that entire force be actually dispelled here. Just the PC (and a couple of friends) did it? :P Well, maybe there were some Dol Amroth troops engaged too, idk.

The force wasn't entirely dispelled. They just lost their leader, and thus coordination, eliminating the larger threat of an attack against Anfalas and more attacks against Dol Amroth. There was still plenty of Corsairs in the Crown region after we left. They're were just disorganized and leaderless.

Players CAN already level up and wind up in a position when they're largely over-levelled for Epic story content, with all these additional regions nonetheless... Players doing BtS, if they're newbies, might want to explore stories in Bree or Lonelands or Shire and Yondershire as well... some of them might use a Stone of the tortoise (I guess it would help if the stone was streamlined a bit more, like if you actually got that for free at the start), others may not and still find it acceptable that they over-level because they care about all these storylines, or some others might just quickly move on to level relevant content as they level up, not caring whether that's Epic or not. So I really don't think that's a problem and if anything, the enthusiasm for all these lower lvl regions proved it. More content = doesn't hurt (and I would welcome more sources of XP done in a different way, so free-roam works better across the world). Let the people go where they want. But yeah, storyline shouldn't become disjointed and messy, like WoW, should be clear where is a cohesive main storyline and where not.

meant more like the Eaves of Fangorn region specifically. Sure, you have things that focus around Ents - or more predominantly Huorns - but the quest design was different and no hub-to-hub at all. Was more adventurous, driven by our character choices to investigate and explore (with more PC's POV provided during questing, rather than just be told what to do by someone, in which case we hardly ever "hear" and "feel" from our PC's POV). That's the kind of quest design that would very fitting for more wild regions, given some premise of scouting/exploration/or maybe we pursue someone, lots of ways to make it work.

Scenario already said something like "There are different level ranges that need this treatment in the future," I think this was in one of CardoSwan related streams, though I don't remember the exact wording. But I think they're aware these are needed/desired.

I never mentioned being overleveled for the Epic questline, I said making an entire 2nd leveling experience separate from the main narrative path. You can be as overleveeld as you want right now, but you're still going down the same map chain/narrative progress as everyone else. This not being so if you can, say, start from Swanfleet, then move down the coast to come into Anfalas or western Gondor as part of a wholly separate leveling path. And yeah, more open questing like Eaves would be nice, but the Eaves still tied into the larger storyline.

I guess. Well, these are probably the cases where the devs lean towards being flexible, since otherwise there wouldn't be a game + the world wouldn't be exactly 100% believable, once you delve into it and start considering history, migrations, infrastructure and geopolitics. It's no fault of Tolkien of course. When you're an author, even a very scrupulous one, there are just some things you don't need to care about and delve too much into for the purposes of your story so they don't require much thought, they're just a footnote, after all. But I can easily imagine LOTRO's Lindon being a bit more settled, full with new elven homesteads for us, than just one city and otherwise an empty land.

I would imagine Lindon being like Lothlorien, where there is one major city, and some outlying facilities. But in Lindon's case its three cities, Mithlond, Harlond, and Forlond, each with accompanying outlying facilities. So we would get something like a Mithlond map, that covers the Tower Hills, Mithlond, and a little bit of the bay on both the north and south shores, with roads on each shore leading to separate maps for Forlond and Harlond which are similar in setup.

Yet still many of us here believe Gondor feels a little bit undersized/condensed - as a kingdom - so maybe they shouldn't just do that to Umbar too (which isn't a big big kingdom and more like a city state, but certainly a powerful one, with some fiefdoms and such, maybe even vassals among neighboring inland states, if you take Berúthiel's story into account). Ah, I got it in the back of my mind, that I was to go through a quest text in Gondor and search for it, but I do recall some hints of the Heirs being a bit more like "the Gurzyul of the Umbar-controlled domain" so they might be scattered in control of different territories. But I'm not exactly sure on this, whether I recall correctly. Plus, Umbar and its bay as biomes... such tremendous opportunity to make it bombastic and super modern, swimmable from one shore to another, including islands along the coasts, with areas all around, and then up river past Umbar. I truly believe that's a jewel among jewels in terms how wild and bombastic you could be, and that maybe... it is something to better keep in reserve if they can actually have these traversable boats a few years from now or so... you know, pirates, swimmable boats, quests on waters, island housing... It's like a Joker in your deck but using it prematurely might not exactly be wise and we still have so many things we could possibly go to.

I don't think thats a particularly realistic outcome to expect, nor should they delay doing that for such a design. And we kinda have island housing in the Bay of Bafalas housing.

[TesalionLortus]

Counterpoint, the people of Rhun don't do any real trading with the nations of the west like Gondor and Rohan, their only western ally is Mordor. Why would they take the road that leads into the blasted Plateau of Gorgoroth, which is mainly used as a army staging ground and weapons manufacturing area, when they can take the back entrance and come into Nurn and Lithlad which is where the actual "normal" people live, and is generally considered to be much better environmentally?

True for normal people. But what we discussed was military and the guys returning home, such as the Variags. Some might prefer to avoid the Plateau and you can't exactly fly over it. Unless you go around through Harad and take the Harad road into Mordor/Nurn but then you gotta enjoy some of the desert climate possibly.

The Kingdom of Dale is like Dale, Laketown, and Utterby. They barely have the manpower to protect their small region, much less actively harass a road that far away. The Dwarves would be too busy doing dwarf stuff in the mountains.

If that was true, that they are just no threat at all, then Rhun would have conquered them long ago, possibly. Besides, military being military, you *don't* do "hey, maybe they won't have any ideas to cut us off here or something" - that would have been incredibly stupid.

We don't know Borangos went into the volcano. If he had the ability to get whatever it is he seeks under the volcano previously he would've done it before, and nothing narratively has suggested he gained the ability to do so off screen. All we know is that he vanished, seemingly due to the progress of the "Conquest of Gorgorth" campaign. He could've fled into Nurn for whatever reason, for all we know. If he had gone into the volcano, one would think it would've been seen given that much of Gorgorth has been claimed by the group.

Borangos the Horror says, "Now Urudanî, we must be patient. The time is coming."
Borangos the Horror says, "I have been waiting for this moment ever since you freed me from my prison."
Borangos the Horror says, "While all those in Mordor seek land, riches, and power, I seek something greater."
Borangos the Horror says, "Orodruin."
Borangos the Horror says, "Not the mountain that stands on the plain of Gorgoroth, but what lies beneath it."
Borangos the Horror says, "What gives our realm its strength, and drives me?"
Borangos the Horror says, "You will find out this in due time, my most devoted."
Borangos the Horror says, "Come, we have much more to accomplish."


We pretty much know about his goals and it was confirmed he vanished with all of his servants. Now where they could have gone... the deduction is fairly easy, especially that no one seen them marching towards Nurn.

As for the gate to Nurn - can be easily assailed by advancing troops... Plus, that's what I mean, Aragorn or Gandalf would know about the number of the Gurzyul. Our character is privy to knowledge because they do some investigating - so are we doing that for a reason or... is our player character either an idiot or a Loki joker? Surely all that information is passed on, no? Which means Aragorn, Gandalf, and others of prominence, or some commanders, at the very least... they should know and draw their own conclusions, and these information all put together certainly paint a picture and bring concern. That's certainly my worry - that the game doesn't treat it like our characters' actions (in particular big intel we get/witness) have consequences because everyone just acts like they're super oblivious anyway. So I hope that won't be the case.

And the Angmarim situation isn't THAT troubling. As mentioned before, its very rare, to the point of almost never happening, that one achieves such a total victory against an enemy that they're completely wiped out to the last.

Aragorn has little reason to not just leave it up to the Dwarves/Northern Rangers.

If they were just all staffs and blades - sure. But, again, PC witnessed things and these things are nowhere near "a small band of rangers can handle everything just fine" - Drugoth returned to life is no joke, Angmarim zealots bringing mountains down is no piece of cake, missing creepy relics of the Witch-king are certainly not your everyday news, not to mention the missing Rhudaur oath-stone. The way it was framed, where the Mordorrim just outright lost hope/continue to serve the Gurzyul and play the long game (with some of the priesthood doomed seeking out places such as Mordath), the Angmarim solidified but seemingly under different "cells" and doubled down on their efforts and zealotry (kinda like terrorist cells...). In Mordor, only Rukhor seemed like a dangerous crazy one among men cultists, with his Shelob scheme. With Angmar's men... anyone among them can be an outright Rukhor and you never know who and where. Just give them some ancient bones to worship and spread its disease... and you've got a scenario for disaster.



I mean that Rhun is more likely precisely because it wouldn't have to involve Aragorn. It can be just the PC chasing after the mysteries (and another missing dragon... and Karazgar...).

You can be as overleveeld as you want right now, but you're still going down the same map chain/narrative progress as everyone else. This not being so if you can, say, start from Swanfleet, then move down the coast to come into Anfalas or western Gondor as part of a wholly separate leveling path.

To be precise, I'm not exactly a fan of the idea that there should be like a continuous lvl 50 to 100 pathway down the coast to Gondor. That's a viable issue that you mention, with all of it seemingly so separate as the result. But I see absolutely no problem with, say, lvl 50-60 Minhiriath/parts of Enedwath that lets you to circumvent and go into Enedwaith/Dunland Epics if you wanna. And Moria is still relatively close-by, so it's not like you're taken leagues away from the proper storyline to the point that you nearly forgot that it's there. This would be literally no different than Yonderhire or the Angle which don't have any Epics going on for them but are relatively close-by to areas that have Epics.

Then, what I suggested most recently, rather than move to Gondor, lvl 75-85 alternative to East Rohan (or something like it) between Isengard, Lothlorien and Rohan could be perfect. BtS mentioned something about Saruman gathering orcs "probably from their mountain fortresses" so that would be a great way to explore those, closer to Isengard, in the backyard of Fangorn. LOTRO's Saruman can't have his orcs from Mordor, can't have them from Moria (which the game specifically said he send his guys in there to try and take control) and he can't have them from Gundabad, which was said to supply Angmar forces and participate in the assault on Dale/Erebor. Goblin-town doesn't fit either, maybe some mercenaries at best. So there really gotta be some orc keeps and dwellings closer to Isengard, that supplied Saruman with his White Hand orcs and goblins that swore allegiance to him specifically

I don't think thats a particularly realistic outcome to expect, nor should they delay doing that for such a design. And we kinda have island housing in the Bay of Bafalas housing.

Disagree. They're obviously confident about the game, since they say things such as "another 15 years!" and don't have to worry about the license either, apparently. If they can delay the Scouring, why not this? (especially if there is a cool enough prospect of doing something bombastic with it later)

Not really island housing - these are just for kinships. I meant more like little islands, kind of archipelago/swiss cheese look near the coast/as part of the bay. Some kind of pirate housing perhaps. Rather than stables -> port features. And if we only could have these traversable boats to move between these islands... WOW.

[Arnand_the_Fox]

True for normal people. But what we discussed was military and the guys returning home, such as the Variags. Some might prefer to avoid the Plateau and you can't exactly fly over it. Unless you go around through Harad and take the Harad road into Mordor/Nurn but then you gotta enjoy some of the desert climate possibly.

And how many people, over how long of a time period, does that actually apply too? Large numbers of Easterlings only came into the area for the assault on Gondor, and only fled recently after said attack failed. Its something that only has use in this ultra small timeframe of a few months as part of Sauron's attack, not a long term, constant use, road that needs Rhun to take and hold the land for it to be kept secure. Outside of this assault, the road is incredibly useless to the people of Rhun since they can get into Mordor, faster, just by going in the back.

If that was true, that they are just no threat at all, then Rhun would have conquered them long ago, possibly. Besides, military being military, you *don't* do "hey, maybe they won't have any ideas to cut us off here or something" - that would have been incredibly stupid.

The Dale lands WERE almost conquered as part of the war, and by a fairly small detachment of Sauron's overall Easterling force to boot. Dale and Erebor's survival has always been contingent on the fact they're out in the middle of nowhere, and the bulk of Rhun is to the south/south-east of the Sea of Rhun, not up near Dale. And again, who is going to cut off the Easterlings? Dale and Erebor are nearly 1,000 miles away from the road, and no one is known to live in the lands of the "blank spot" east of the brown lands. Mordor can just keep some orcs patrolling it and its perfectly secure.

We pretty much know about his goals and it was confirmed he vanished with all of his servants. Now where they could have gone... the deduction is fairly easy, especially that no one seen them marching towards Nurn.

As for the gate to Nurn - can be easily assailed by advancing troops... Plus, that's what I mean, Aragorn or Gandalf would know about the number of the Gurzyul. Our character is privy to knowledge because they do some investigating - so are we doing that for a reason or... is our player character either an idiot or a Loki joker? Surely all that information is passed on, no? Which means Aragorn, Gandalf, and others of prominence, or some commanders, at the very least... they should know and draw their own conclusions, and these information all put together certainly paint a picture and bring concern. That's certainly my worry - that the game doesn't treat it like our characters' actions (in particular big intel we get/witness) have consequences because everyone just acts like they're super oblivious anyway. So I hope that won't be the case.

As the last line in your quoted text says "we have much more to accomplish" indicating there is a lot more they have to do before they reach their goal. I don't think SSG is so narratively incompetent that they would have Borangos go into Mount Doom, and get the thing, without first telling us what it is, showing him actually doing the things he needs to do to get there, and having some plot point of us trying to stop him from getting it. If hes already in the volcano, and gotten the thing, we already lost, so its just game over. And that would beg the question, what has he been doing for all this time since the events of Gorgorth, and the end of Gundabad, where hes gotten the thing he wanted, but then... not done anything with it? And just as no one saw him going into Nurn no one saw him going into the Vvolcano. The area around the volcano has been secured however, the paths into Nurn have not. Its more likely he could escape unseen to Nurn then march into the Volcano undetected.

If they were just all staffs and blades - sure. But, again, PC witnessed things and these things are nowhere near "a small band of rangers can handle everything just fine" - Drugoth returned to life is no joke, Angmarim zealots bringing mountains down is no piece of cake, missing creepy relics of the Witch-king are certainly not your everyday news, not to mention the missing Rhudaur oath-stone. The way it was framed, where the Mordorrim just outright lost hope/continue to serve the Gurzyul and play the long game (with some of the priesthood doomed seeking out places such as Mordath), the Angmarim solidified but seemingly under different "cells" and doubled down on their efforts and zealotry (kinda like terrorist cells...). In Mordor, only Rukhor seemed like a dangerous crazy one among men cultists, with his Shelob scheme. With Angmar's men... anyone among them can be an outright Rukhor and you never know who and where. Just give them some ancient bones to worship and spread its disease... and you've got a scenario for disaster.

I mean that Rhun is more likely precisely because it wouldn't have to involve Aragorn. It can be just the PC chasing after the mysteries (and another missing dragon... and Karazgar...).

Drugoth was killed again, for the last time, WAY back in the "In Their absence" questline which happened before Rohan. And theres crazy ancient artifacts all over the place in Middle Earth. Between the stuff going on in Mordor, trying to make peace with the Easterlings, Haradrim, and Corsairs, and whatever happened in Rhun. A handful of remnant Angmar cultists in the extreme north of the world, who are already getting their butts kicked by the huge dwarven army thats retaking Gundabad.... is pretty low on the list of issues.

And Harad, Umbar, and Khand, don't need to involve Aragorn either. We can go to Umbar while helping Jajax or w/e.

To be precise, I'm not exactly a fan of the idea that there should be like a continuous lvl 50 to 100 pathway down the coast to Gondor. That's a viable issue that you mention, with all of it seemingly so separate as the result. But I see absolutely no problem with, say, lvl 50-60 Minhiriath/parts of Enedwath that lets you to circumvent and go into Enedwaith/Dunland Epics if you wanna. And Moria is still relatively close-by, so it's not like you're taken leagues away from the proper storyline to the point that you nearly forgot that it's there. This would be literally no different than Yonderhire or the Angle which don't have any Epics going on for them but are relatively close-by to areas that have Epics.

Then, what I suggested most recently, rather than move to Gondor, lvl 75-85 alternative to East Rohan (or something like it) between Isengard, Lothlorien and Rohan could be perfect. BtS mentioned something about Saruman gathering orcs "probably from their mountain fortresses" so that would be a great way to explore those, closer to Isengard, in the backyard of Fangorn. LOTRO's Saruman can't have his orcs from Mordor, can't have them from Moria (which the game specifically said he send his guys in there to try and take control) and he can't have them from Gundabad, which was said to supply Angmar forces and participate in the assault on Dale/Erebor. Goblin-town doesn't fit either, maybe some mercenaries at best. So there really gotta be some orc keeps and dwellings closer to Isengard, that supplied Saruman with his White Hand orcs and goblins that swore allegiance to him specifically

I think the idea of circumventing Moria isn't viable. The Moria questline ties into so much, not just in Moria itself, but Lothlorien, Dul Guldur, and our continued adventures past that, that I don't see it working out.

As for Saruman's orcs, IIRC its mentioned there are orcs in the White Mountains, which are a stone's throw to the south of Isengard. I had an diea for a White Mountains map, but that would be a map between Rohan and Gondor, after Isengard has fallen, not a way to skirt around Moria.

Disagree. They're obviously confident about the game, since they say things such as "another 15 years!" and don't have to worry about the license either, apparently. If they can delay the Scouring, why not this? (especially if there is a cool enough prospect of doing something bombastic with it later)

Not really island housing - these are just for kinships. I meant more like little islands, kind of archipelago/swiss cheese look near the coast/as part of the bay. Some kind of pirate housing perhaps. Rather than stables -> port features. And if we only could have these traversable boats to move between these islands... WOW.

Being confident that the game can easily continue in the way it has for another decade isn't the same as being confident that adding in a feature like real time sailable ships, that would have use for all of like... 2-3 zones, is a good idea. Sailable ships at this point would be Rohan mounted combat 2.0, but even more limited since the only naval content of any note in the Lord of the Rings setting(at least during the Third Age) is in regards to the Corsairs, who have already lost the vast majority of their fleet due to the ghosts. Who are we going to be fighting with it? And as you can see in that map I posted above, the bay of Umbar isn't even that large, the sea of Nurn is larger, there wouldn't be much room to sail around in at game scale in the first place.

[TesalionLortus]

Outside of this assault, the road is incredibly useless to the people of Rhun since they can get into Mordor, faster, just by going in the back.

The Dale lands WERE almost conquered as part of the war, and by a fairly small detachment of Sauron's overall Easterling force to boot.

Almost conquered as part of Sauron's big assault including orcs from Gundabad/presumably Dol Guldur. But there should certainly be some kind of hostility between Easterlings and Dale men, at the very least, if there is no friendship. Anyway, even so, securing a road during any military campaign, even if it's just a few days, is a no brainer. But we're just talking semantics at this point and it all depends on the dev's idea of handling these regions North of Mordor (not to mention solving the Iron Hills "too much West!" dilemma... I guess they should just leave it as is but cover lots of ground with Dorwinion and some accompanying regions before Rhun to compensate for that, so we don't have Rhun positioned somewhere weird, like immediately above Gorgoroth

As the last line in your quoted text says "we have much more to accomplish" indicating there is a lot more they have to do before they reach their goal.

Yeah, but that's my point, PC and Gondorians should take initiative to uncover his exact plans and movements, not just sit around or busy themselves with something else/lesser threats

{SPOILER} - Drugoth's spirit has returned in Gundabad, actually, and taken over Lokhashra as a vessel.

Between the stuff going on in Mordor, trying to make peace with the Easterlings, Haradrim, and Corsairs, and whatever happened in Rhun. A handful of remnant Angmar cultists in the extreme north of the world, who are already getting their butts kicked by the huge dwarven army thats retaking Gundabad.... is pretty low on the list of issues.

Mordor is of course at the top of the list of priorities here. But I wouldn't consider "trying to make peace" "important" - because it's essentially an equivalent of striving for an official seal, but nothing of significance and practical importance. Harad's military is down, no military threat. Same Umbar, their fleet suffered heavy blow. Rhun in similar position + devastation, and as of now, Rhun isn't really a big concern for Aragorn anyway, geographically. If anything, they would be a threat to Dale first, not him. On top of that, Far Harad kingdom made official peace with Gondor and while Black Serpent guys are rather unlikely to do so, the inner struggles will have them all busy anyway for some years. Making peace with them is nowhere high on "use your experienced, trusted companion/hero" for that. Better send a regular diplomate - if he wanna press the issue anyway, and trusts that they won't just kill a diplomat or something. But seems perfectly logical to use the PC for something that matters more. Even some tasks relating to the planned restoration of Arnor would have been a better fit / more sensible to give to the PC than seeking peace with Haradrim and Easterlings who have already proven they don't wanna official peace yet ( in their pride) given how they haven't send anyone to the victor, like the Far Harad did, that's actually statement enough.

And Harad, Umbar, and Khand, don't need to involve Aragorn either. We can go to Umbar while helping Jajax or w/e.

Could be, only like I said, my problem would be with the believability behind PC and others such as Gandalf who might use our help. Like, PC should have some brain/priorities too, and certainly they would put threats closer home and helping out their friends (like Gandalf or other good guys) over... helping a pirate because they feel like it's time to go sight seeing South? It just feels off. The devs used to have it all mostly figured out because the events of the War of the Ring were always things of top priority, whether in the footsteps of the fellowship to protect them/figure things out or things directly relating to war. Or, with SoA, all stuff relating to Angmar which was geographically important. But now it's less so, and there are reasonably some priorities to be had, including what our PC chooses to do and why.

I think the idea of circumventing Moria isn't viable. The Moria questline ties into so much, not just in Moria itself, but Lothlorien, Dul Guldur, and our continued adventures past that, that I don't see it working out.

Which is why I'm against alternate Epics. But many people will and do omit content - with how much content there is - and some of that content (Yondershire, Angle etc) does tie into the overall storyline as well, albeit in a smaller way. The "smaller way" is what I expect from such additional regions/expacs.

As for Saruman's orcs, IIRC its mentioned there are orcs in the White Mountains, which are a stone's throw to the south of Isengard. I had an diea for a White Mountains map, but that would be a map between Rohan and Gondor, after Isengard has fallen, not a way to skirt around Moria.

Hmm, doubtful. We've already seen White Mountain orcs and these are portrayed as much wilder orcs in LOTRO. Also, if there was an orc fortress in White Mountains, something akin to Goblin-town, would make more sense to attack places like Rohan or Gondor from the back, not gather in Isengard through... Dunland? West-march? Rohan proper? Kinda off. I'm confident Saruman has his orcs from Misties.

Being confident that the game can easily continue in the way it has for another decade isn't the same as being confident that adding in a feature like real time sailable ships, that would have use for all of like... 2-3 zones, is a good idea. Sailable ships at this point would be Rohan mounted combat 2.0, but even more limited since the only naval content of any note in the Lord of the Rings setting(at least during the Third Age) is in regards to the Corsairs, who have already lost the vast majority of their fleet due to the ghosts. Who are we going to be fighting with it? And as you can see in that map I posted above, the bay of Umbar isn't even that large, the sea of Nurn is larger, there wouldn't be much room to sail around in at game scale in the first place.

Funny thing, I've checked Scenario's Evendim stream today and it reminded me he actually said boats are something that "pops up a lot in their internal talks", so definitely something that's on their radar Well, I said boats, not exactly ships. I don't think there needs to be combat attached and boats have many uses, even something like boat questing is a MAJOR addition. To be able to do some scouting on waters or lots of different things, plus what players have been wanting for ages now - all other waters traversable, not just in new content. They could very easily build lots of content around boats throughout entire Middle-earth, along its shores and rivers, so boats isn't really just mounted 2.0 -> I think it has much greater potential, actually, because it introduces an entire new dimension to the world and questing on landscape. Mounted gave you enemies you can fight on horseback, that's it. And, if they actually managed some "boat combat" in some way, then it would be superior to mounted in every aspect, at least as far as the number of features/prospects it brings goes.

Isn't that map the "globus" take on Middle-earth though? These things always confuse me, thinking about real world sizes vs how things look on maps always messes with my brain. For example, real size world is more like this, when accurately portrayed: https://decolonialatlas.files.wordpr...ntries-map.jpg Though no idea how something like this may apply to Middle-earth and whether the devs even think of things like that.

PS: Besides, LOTRO does condense some things more than others, take their Shire, for example. Or Lake-town lake, which is turned into a major feature of the map, but realistically it would be much smaller and then all these cities less condensed than they are now (same with Mount Doom). So that's what I mean, they can turn the bay of Umbar into such a major feature. If they had boats, you can realistically even have more water than land in there (+ islands and stuff). Rather than 1-2 zones, they can have the entire bay from the ocean to Umbar and the river span across the line of 6-7 zones, as an expac. I would also give the mouth of the river more of a "Swanfleet" treatment rather than mouth of Anduin one (which feels a bit small), in this scenario. Nen Hithoel is as big as the mouth of Anduin but smaller than Long Lake... which itself is smaller than Evendim (that does fit) but then Evendim is as big as the Souther part of Bay of Forochel, which is a giant misunderstanding - all completely messy for proportions here, LOTRO is never going to be lore-accurate with proportions, so rather than limit themselves, they should just take advantage from juicy pieces of landscape. Areas such as bays and shorelines, or mouths of great rivers, these are particularly juicy, and if you can have a boat in a more exotic setting, oh my gosh

[Arnand_the_Fox]

Almost conquered as part of Sauron's big assault including orcs from Gundabad/presumably Dol Guldur. But there should certainly be some kind of hostility between Easterlings and Dale men, at the very least, if there is no friendship. Anyway, even so, securing a road during any military campaign, even if it's just a few days, is a no brainer. But we're just talking semantics at this point and it all depends on the dev's idea of handling these regions North of Mordor (not to mention solving the Iron Hills "too much West!" dilemma... I guess they should just leave it as is but cover lots of ground with Dorwinion and some accompanying regions before Rhun to compensate for that, so we don't have Rhun positioned somewhere weird, like immediately above Gorgoroth

Dol Guldur was being pinned by the Elves of Lothlorian, and didn't participate in the battle of Dale. The Easterlings sent to conquer Dale were supposed to go south after Dale had been captured, and reinforce Dol Guldur's assault on the elves. This is why Dale/Erebor's defeat of the Easterlings was so important. While it wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome of the war(Sauron's death), had the Easterlings been victorious at Dale they would've linked up with Dol Guldur, broken the elves of northern Mirkwood and Lothlorien, and then moved south into Rohan and Gondor crushing both armies from the north and rear. There's even comments by Gandalf in the appendix of the books that had the battle of Dale been lost, the victory at Pelennor wouldn't have mattered.

And yeah, the Easterlings are hostile to most everyone in the west. Dale/Erebor are just located way in the butt end of nowhere, and are further away from the bulk of Rhun than Gondor and Rohan are, so most Easterling attacks tend to be against Rohan and Gondor, not the northlands.

Mordor is of course at the top of the list of priorities here. But I wouldn't consider "trying to make peace" "important" - because it's essentially an equivalent of striving for an official seal, but nothing of significance and practical importance. Harad's military is down, no military threat. Same Umbar, their fleet suffered heavy blow. Rhun in similar position + devastation, and as of now, Rhun isn't really a big concern for Aragorn anyway, geographically. If anything, they would be a threat to Dale first, not him. On top of that, Far Harad kingdom made official peace with Gondor and while Black Serpent guys are rather unlikely to do so, the inner struggles will have them all busy anyway for some years. Making peace with them is nowhere high on "use your experienced, trusted companion/hero" for that. Better send a regular diplomate - if he wanna press the issue anyway, and trusts that they won't just kill a diplomat or something. But seems perfectly logical to use the PC for something that matters more. Even some tasks relating to the planned restoration of Arnor would have been a better fit / more sensible to give to the PC than seeking peace with Haradrim and Easterlings who have already proven they don't wanna official peace yet ( in their pride) given how they haven't send anyone to the victor, like the Far Harad did, that's actually statement enough.

Its exactly BECAUSE Harad, Umbar, and Rhun's militaries are so weakened that its the perfect time to seek peace. Since Rohan and Gondor's are as drained as well, with how many people were lost in Pelennor Fields, and how much destruction Gondor and Rohan had in the war beforehand, we're at a point where no side has a clear advantage over the other, so peace can be bought at a bargain price. At least one major Haradrim Kingdom has already shown interest in peace, we have a massive refugee crisis coming out of Rhun that could be easily leveraged in favor of peace, and theres a very easy plot that could be done with the corsairs regarding a change of leadership thats could cause them to seek peace with Gondor. Peace is something that is easier to achieve now there its ever been, and not seeking it now only leads to more difficulty to try to achieve the same in the long term once people start rebuilding.

On the other hand, sending the player to begin tasks in the north to restore Arnor makes no sense right now. Its going to be years before Gondor itself is rebuilt to a stable level that they can begin thinking about expansion to the north. The restoration of Arnor is an ultra long term project that not only has no immediate benefit to Gondor/Aragorn, but in fact actively hurts his ability to help the kingdom he actually rules now by zapping resources currently needed in Gondor's rebuilding. Seeking to restore Arnor, over making some sort of peace with the remaining enemy factions, is not only an massive wasted chance for long term benefits to the entire West, but is bordering on active self sabotage of one's own rule.

Or as Quark from Star Trek Deep Space 9 said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s

That being said, that gives me an idea for the coastal regions of Eriador. Rebuilding Arnor is going to be a massive project, and trying to haul manpower and resources entirely on land to Eriador would be a long and arduous process. Especially given that the people of Dunland probably wouldn't be too happy with Gondor trying to move lots of men/materials through their lands. I could see, after all the stuff with Rhun, Harad, Umbar, and Mordor, is over, when theres real peace, and some semblance of long term stability, Aragorn sending a team to Lond Daer, to try to reestablish the port city as a entry point to sending more people into the north. This would be a good plot to get the coastal regions of Enedwaith, and Minhiriath, into the game as end game maps. You could buffer them and the new BtS maps with some mid level maps so players cant just accidentally walk into them easily. This would be like post Frodo leaving however.

Could be, only like I said, my problem would be with the believability behind PC and others such as Gandalf who might use our help. Like, PC should have some brain/priorities too, and certainly they would put threats closer home and helping out their friends (like Gandalf or other good guys) over... helping a pirate because they feel like it's time to go sight seeing South? It just feels off. The devs used to have it all mostly figured out because the events of the War of the Ring were always things of top priority, whether in the footsteps of the fellowship to protect them/figure things out or things directly relating to war. Or, with SoA, all stuff relating to Angmar which was geographically important. But now it's less so, and there are reasonably some priorities to be had, including what our PC chooses to do and why.

What defines a threat is really based on whats the most current pressing issue. Borangos and Lhaereth are currently MIA, with no one having seen them go anywhere specific, and one one being able to find them. There's been no observable movement/sightings from Mothgorod and Nûlbanath, the gates into Nurn remained as sealed now as they were back when they first set foot into Gorgoroth, and the Dwarves are already slapping around the Angmariam remnants. If the remaining Corsairs start causing issues in Anfalas that becomes the biggest current issue, and the one it makes the most sense to send us to until the status on the other issues changes. Sending the player to try to chance down Borangos, when you have no real leads, and the player can't survive in a volcano anyways, is a waste of time when they could be setting the stage of a longer term end to hostilities between Gondor and Umbar/Harad. Especially since Umbar is the closest of the Kingdoms of Harad to Gondor.

Yeah, but that's my point, PC and Gondorians should take initiative to uncover his exact plans and movements, not just sit around or busy themselves with something else/lesser threats

{SPOILER} - Drugoth's spirit has returned in Gundabad, actually, and taken over Lokhashra as a vessel.

This implies they can uncovers his exact plans and movements. We heard that the Conquest has secured Talath Úrui, which would imply Borangos' old base as well. And no one has seen him since. If theres nothing in his old base detailing his plans/movements, we can't just uncover his exact plans and movements until he slips up in a way we can track. Unless you have a volcano proof suit, we can't do much if he actually did go into the volcano.

Ahh well I haven't entirely finished Gundabad yet so I didn't know he came back.

Which is why I'm against alternate Epics. But many people will and do omit content - with how much content there is - and some of that content (Yondershire, Angle etc) does tie into the overall storyline as well, albeit in a smaller way. The "smaller way" is what I expect from such additional regions/expacs.

That would still cause issues since the Moria epic is tied into getting your legendary weapons, and you wouldn't want to give player's the chance to level around Moria without getting a legendary weapon, where they wind up in a situation where they're much higher level, but only now getting introduced to a concept they otherwise would've gained access to much earlier on the original path.

Hmm, doubtful. We've already seen White Mountain orcs and these are portrayed as much wilder orcs in LOTRO. Also, if there was an orc fortress in White Mountains, something akin to Goblin-town, would make more sense to attack places like Rohan or Gondor from the back, not gather in Isengard through... Dunland? West-march? Rohan proper? Kinda off. I'm confident Saruman has his orcs from Misties.

The White Mountains go all the way from Minas Tirith, to Andrast on the other side of Gondor. If the orc strongholds in the White Mountains are in the bit directly south of Isengard then that just helps Saruman better control the gap leading into Rohan. I also don't recall too much orc presence near the mountains south of Moria outside of the Balewood. But those orcs were explicitly sent there to cut down the forest, they weren't there because they lived in the nearby mountains. There are however a lot of orcs in the gap, which could be explained by them coming down from the White Mountains.

Funny thing, I've checked Scenario's Evendim stream today and it reminded me he actually said boats are something that "pops up a lot in their internal talks", so definitely something that's on their radar Well, I said boats, not exactly ships. I don't think there needs to be combat attached and boats have many uses, even something like boat questing is a MAJOR addition. To be able to do some scouting on waters or lots of different things, plus what players have been wanting for ages now - all other waters traversable, not just in new content. They could very easily build lots of content around boats throughout entire Middle-earth, along its shores and rivers, so boats isn't really just mounted 2.0 -> I think it has much greater potential, actually, because it introduces an entire new dimension to the world and questing on landscape. Mounted gave you enemies you can fight on horseback, that's it. And, if they actually managed some "boat combat" in some way, then it would be superior to mounted in every aspect, at least as far as the number of features/prospects it brings goes.

Isn't that map the "globus" take on Middle-earth though? These things always confuse me, thinking about real world sizes vs how things look on maps always messes with my brain. For example, real size world is more like this, when accurately portrayed: https://decolonialatlas.files.wordpr...ntries-map.jpg Though no idea how something like this may apply to Middle-earth and whether the devs even think of things like that.

PS: Besides, LOTRO does condense some things more than others, take their Shire, for example. Or Lake-town lake, which is turned into a major feature of the map, but realistically it would be much smaller and then all these cities less condensed than they are now (same with Mount Doom). So that's what I mean, they can turn the bay of Umbar into such a major feature. If they had boats, you can realistically even have more water than land in there (+ islands and stuff). Rather than 1-2 zones, they can have the entire bay from the ocean to Umbar and the river span across the line of 6-7 zones, as an expac. I would also give the mouth of the river more of a "Swanfleet" treatment rather than mouth of Anduin one (which feels a bit small), in this scenario. Nen Hithoel is as big as the mouth of Anduin but smaller than Long Lake... which itself is smaller than Evendim (that does fit) but then Evendim is as big as the Souther part of Bay of Forochel, which is a giant misunderstanding - all completely messy for proportions here, LOTRO is never going to be lore-accurate with proportions, so rather than limit themselves, they should just take advantage from juicy pieces of landscape. Areas such as bays and shorelines, or mouths of great rivers, these are particularly juicy, and if you can have a boat in a more exotic setting, oh my gosh

Things "popping up a lot in their internal talks" is generally dev speak for "we think its a cool idea in concept, but have no real idea on how to implement it in a meaningful way". I've seen this so many times, and in other MMOs I play like Star Trek Online. The things that pop up the most in internal dev conversations are the things that zero real progress due to some technical or design hurdle they can't figure out a good solution for. Thats why they keep popping up, they never get done. Things that get done don't pop up all the time because they end up getting made.

Outside of the Anduin, theres not to many rivers of importance in Lord of the Rings that go anywhere of note or importance. What rivers and waterways we do have in-game are all too often broken up by tons of large waterfalls, rapids, and other features, that would make traversing them by boat effectively impossible. Outside of massively redoing the landscape of most of the established waterways, the addition of boats would have a near zero on any of the content put out in the last 15+ years of the game's life. The only two currently existing places they would serve a purpose for are Evendim, and the Long Lake, but those would be way before you get boats, and you only have to go across them a few times anyways, making it fairly limited use. And yes, LOTRO does condense things are different rates, mainly earlier game areas due to a difference in design philosophy back then, but that doesn't mean they're going to over-scale the bay of Umbar to fit like 6 zones just to justify boats that would be only useful in there. Not to mention no expansion is going to have like 6 zones in it. Most of them only have 1(admittedly large) map, other times two. And what river are you talking about again? There is no river going into Umbar, its just a bay formed by a peninsula coming out of Harard. Umbar/the bay don't connect to any rivers.

[TesalionLortus]

Its exactly BECAUSE Harad, Umbar, and Rhun's militaries are so weakened that its the perfect time to seek peace. Since Rohan and Gondor's are as drained as well, with how many people were lost in Pelennor Fields, and how much destruction Gondor and Rohan had in the war beforehand, we're at a point where no side has a clear advantage over the other, so peace can be bought at a bargain price. At least one major Haradrim Kingdom has already shown interest in peace, we have a massive refugee crisis coming out of Rhun that could be easily leveraged in favor of peace, and theres a very easy plot that could be done with the corsairs regarding a change of leadership thats could cause them to seek peace with Gondor. Peace is something that is easier to achieve now there its ever been, and not seeking it now only leads to more difficulty to try to achieve the same in the long term once people start rebuilding.

To me, it sounds like you overvalue the meaning of diplomacy in a setting like this. Historically, peace is rather fragile, and that you officially achieved it (especially if that's regarding your hateful foe) is no guarantee of peace at all. It was said Aragorn made peace with the Haradrim after the coronation, which was already adapted but these were Far Harad representatives. What does it mean if no one else send a representative to seek out peace? Clearly nothing friendly. Sure, Aragorn might try to reach out, but it doesn't mean it's something to cultivate like a fool, especially that any word from the more unfriendly clans shouldn't be trusted. Plus, to guard peace, it's in Aragorn's interest to see Harad or Rhun people squabble amongst themselves for a time, not meditate and put someone "on a throne" in each key region, which then presents perfect opportunity for this someone to maybe betray his word and turn against Gondor. This kind of thing works if you actually have armies at the ready and an intention to use them in case things go wrong - so you're basically creating a vassal in a foreign land. But if not - and here it's clearly Aragorn who would rather have days of peace, not perspective of involving Gondor in another war at this time (though he might be more willing in Fourth Age) - then there is nothing to motivate such a friend/vassal to abide by their word. For example, with Umbar, you can't trust a pirate that he will not remain a pirate and won't turn against Gondorian merchant vessels once Umbar is united and on a stable foot again. In which case, what's even the point of striving for peace and solving their foreign internal problems to "achieve it" (with your means and resources spent)? There really is none. Aragorn should strive for it of course, within limits, receive emissaries if they wanna come or send letters/some diplomats with good words, but otherwise he shouldn't beg for it nor spent his own resources, time and effort to achieve this geopolitically fragile goal. He would be no good king if he tried that, more like a naive king, still wet behind their ears.

Or as Quark from Star Trek Deep Space 9 said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s

Sounds like he is right but hardly applies to Aragorn situation since that's exactly the case, Aragorn does not want to retaliate and be aggressive here. All he gotta do is just sit and show good will, either they take it or they don't (in which case they're busy with internal affairs anyway and don't have the strength to threaten Gondor), but he does not need "peace at every cost possible" meaning wasting his best agents and resources on pressuring them into peace by meddling in their internal affairs and supporting one faction or another, albeit without the means to ensure their loyalty/friendship (how is that logical? :P). There is no self-sabotage to his rule by enjoying the privileges secured by his military victory against Sauron and then choosing to show good will to his enemies if they're willing - but otherwise stay away and let them handle their own affairs, just watch from afar and look for any signs of real danger, like unified Harad under someone nasty, but that wouldn't realistically happen too quickly, given the death of Black Serpent and political defragmentation that follows.

On the other hand, sending the player to begin tasks in the north to restore Arnor makes no sense right now. Its going to be years before Gondor itself is rebuilt to a stable level that they can begin thinking about expansion to the north. The restoration of Arnor is an ultra long term project that not only has no immediate benefit to Gondor/Aragorn, but in fact actively hurts his ability to help the kingdom he actually rules now by zapping resources currently needed in Gondor's rebuilding

It's not something that can be done overnight and it's not like he is gonna send carts and materials overnight. But it's clearly on his mind, and he is already thinking/preparing for it, as proven by his pilgrimage North and Gandalf's comments to Barliman. Naturally, first there is some scouting to do, some clean-up to be done back in Eriador (so that would include the entire Angmar situation and Drugoth), some talks to be had with different representatives of Eriador etc. That's what our player might be involved in, as his trusted diplomat.

That would still cause issues since the Moria epic is tied into getting your legendary weapons, and you wouldn't want to give player's the chance to level around Moria without getting a legendary weapon, where they wind up in a situation where they're much higher level, but only now getting introduced to a concept they otherwise would've gained access to much earlier on the original path.

I guess they could just streamline the legendary weapon a bit, make it separate from the Epic or something, to be received at Elronds and thus better tied into the new Tracery room (lol, maybe some tutorial quests for the Traceries? because this gotta be the most confusing thing in the game right now)

but that doesn't mean they're going to over-scale the bay of Umbar to fit like 6 zones just to justify boats that would be only useful in there. Not to mention no expansion is going to have like 6 zones in it. Most of them only have 1(admittedly large) map, other times two. And what river are you talking about again? There is no river going into Umbar, its just a bay formed by a peninsula coming out of Harard. Umbar/the bay don't connect to any rivers.

The "why" we can't have boats has been partially revealed by Orion, I think. Because that would be a new system similar to mounted and mounted has problem/contributes to lag. But that's something on their list of problems to solve sometime 2023 and if they can solve that/eliminate its issues - then it's proven "boat mount" is feasible and then it's just a matter of implementation (and that would clearly need to be attached to something like expansion). If, but it remains to be seen, nothing is set in stone

They would be useful everywhere, seriously. Waterfalls are there sometimes but they're no issue, you can just swim down the river, down the waterfall and then summon a boat again. And nobody reasonably expect to swim upstream up a waterfall. Also, lots of areas still left to explore are... near the coasts. So there is still a lot of attractive waters to come. Much more than before. I mean, East Rohan was like 6 zones? It wasn't one, no expac is just one zone. There is no river on Tolkien map/lore (he wasn't very descriptive of places such as Harad) but reasonably there would be a river, zoom in on any google map place and you will always find some rivers. LOTRO does include/invent some of the non-canonical rivers and tributaries quite often, I think, to make it feel natural.